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AUTHOR: 

BLUNi 


5 


HERBERT 


WILLIAM 


TITLE: 


CAUSES  OF  THE 
DECLINE  OF  THE 


m    m    m 


FLA  CE 


OXFORD 


D  A  T  E : 


1887 


Restrictions  on  Use: 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBUOCT?  A  PHICJVfTrROFORM  TARGET 


Master  Negative  # 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


•;•■ 


I  874.08 
|B628 


Blunt,  Herbert  William. 

Oxford.  B.  I  Blr^„t,4'IiST''"'  '^-  '^'■'°'  - 

43  p.    21  J'". 


iL  ?«Tr"''^' -R^P"bHc,  B.  c.  265-30. 


prize  essay. 


I.  Title.    II.  Title :  Arnold 


Title  from  Peabody  Inst, 


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Baltimore.    Printed  by  t.  C. 


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I 


MflNUFfiCTURED   TO   flllM   STflNDRRDS 
BY   APPLIED   IMAGE,     INC. 


THE    CAUSES 


OF    THE 


T 


DECLINE  OF   THE   ROMAN 


COMMONWEALTH 


Zbc  Hvnolt)  prise  Bssa?  for  1887 


BY 


HFRBERT    W.    BLUNT,    B.A. 


LATE     SCHOLAR    OF    ORIEL    COLLEGE 


MOLE    RUIT    SUA 


B.    H.    BLACKWELL,    50   &   51    BROAD    STREET 

LONDON:    SIMPKIN,   MARSHAU.,   &    CO. 

1887 


/ 


THE    CAUSES 


OF    THE 


Columbia  ©ntbt«ftj> 

mt^tCitpotJfetogork 

UBRARY 


m 


t 


DECLINE  OF   THE   ROMAN 
COMMONWEALTH 


Zbc  arnoI&  prise  iBssa^  fov  IS87 


BY 


HERBERT    W.    BLUNT,    B.A. 

LATE     SCHOLAR    OK    ORIKL    COLLEGE 


MOLE    RUIT    SUA 


B.    H.    BLACKWraL,   50   &   51    BROAD    STREET 

LONDOxN:    SIMPKIN,   MARSHALL,   &   CO. 

1887 


THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  DECLINE  OF  THE 
ROMAN  COMMONWEALTH. 


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The  fall  or  decline  of  a  body  politic,  as  it  has  often  been  pointed 
out,  is  solely  the  result  of  its  own  defects ;  and  violence,  to  be  truly 
successful,  must  be  only  the  outward  expression  of  internal  mis- 
chief Save  under  this  condition,  victory  in  reality  rests  with  the 
vanquished  even  in  their  hour  of  defeat,— with  the  Gallo-Roman,  for 
example,  in  France,  and  in  Norman  England  with  the  Saxon. 
Though  the  statement  is  doubtless  a  commonplace,  the  fact  is  of 
the  highest  importance ;  and  specially  so  where,  as  in  the  case  of 
Republican  Rome,  the  proximate  cause  of  downfall  is  a  genius  such 
as  that  of  Gaius  Julius,  supplemented  by  the  only  less  original 
talent  of  Octavian,  and  where  accordingly  causes  of  revolution 
less  personal,  and  therefore  more  radical,  are  only  too  easily  over- 
looked. We  are  too  apt  to  forget  that  that  imperialism  in  which 
republican  ideas  found  their  euthanasia  was  not  in  any  true  sense 
the  destroyer,  and  that  Pharsalus,  Thapsus  and  Munda,  Philippi  and 
Actium  were  in  fact  battles  fought  over  a  dead  Commonwealth.  We 
stand  in  need  of  the  reminder  that  the  history  of  the  decline  of  the 
elder  Rome  is  a  study  in  pathology. 

But  in  thus  limiting  the  inquiry  we  have  really  accomplished  very 
little.  '  Death  from  natural  causes'  is  a  large  verdict  which  can  never 
satisfy  science.  The  autopsy,  too,  of  a  political  organism  is  a  process 
which  has  no  perfect  parallel  in  the  details  of  the  dissecting-room. 
Diagnosis  indeed  is  easy ;  for  the  symptoms  of  governmental  paralysis, 
and  of  the  derangement  of  economic  and  social  functions,  are  in 
general  but  too  obvious  in  discontent,  lawlessness,  and  destructive 
agitation.  But  the  problems  which  rise  next  in  order  are  far  more 
complex  than  in  the  case  of  the  individual. 

The  reasons  for  this  are  plain.  Subjects  for  demonstration  are 
rare  and  seldom  presented  in  their  entirety.  Experimentation  is 
impossible,  and  the  inductions  made  from  necessarily  incomplete 
historical  records  are  of  very  uncertain  application  to  any  particular 
case.  Causes  are  never  simple  and  hardly  ever  merely  composite. 
And  finally,  reciprocal  causation  often  makes  the  discovery  of  separate 
efficients  impossible,  and  confines  investigation  to  very  special  com- 
binations.    In  truth  the  data  are  neither  fully  adequate  nor  indepen- 

A  2        • 


dent      Such  drawbacks,  which  show  in  some  sort  the  limitations  of 
any  political  subject,  are   very  apparent  in  the  case  of  Repubhcan 

Tnd  yet  the  analogy  of  vital  organisation  is  most  pertinent  and 
most  helpful  It  directs  our  attention  to  the  more  essential  pomts  ; 
hints  at  congenital  defects  of  constitution,  at  imperfect  adaptation  to  a 
chan-incr  environment,  at  the  results  of  strain  and  of  excess,  at  irregu- 
larities of  diet  and  assimilation— in  fine,  at  any  and  every  error  in  the 
nature  or  the  nurture  of  the  Roman  state  which  can  possibly  have 

proved  fatal.  ,     .  ^        , 

Followincr  then  the  lead  of  physical  analogies,  we  propose  to  ask 
whether  there  was  any  fatal  imperfection  in  the  nature  of  the  Common- 
wealth which  must  have  infallibly  led  to  its  decline,  and  we  shall 
endeavour  to  show  that  ils  constitution  was  all  but  irretrievably  de- 
fective and  cure  hardly  conceivable.  We  shall  proceed  to  inquire 
Avhether  the  environment  and  history  of  the  Republic -her  external 
circumstances-were  not  of  a  kind  to  precipitate  rather  than  to  arrest 
disease,  and  whether  things  pohiical  and  social  and,  above  all,  facts 
economic,  did  not  accentuate  the  decadence;  while,  finally  we  shall 
attempt  to  make  it  manifest  that  there  was  no  power  in  the  Common- 
wealth able  and  willing  to  regenerate  it  ard  to  save  it,  that  its  death 
was   a   necessary  condition   of  its  resurrection   in    a  modified  and 

chansred  form.  ,         ,  .  ^, 

We  would  not  raise  the  question  whether  the  empire  was  the 
youth  or  the  old  age  of  Rome.  We  would  leave  as  it  stands  the 
controversy  as  to  the  possibility  of  an  earthly  immortality  for  nations  . 
We  would  wish,  however,  to  demonstrate  that  the  Roman  constitution 
was  in  its  essential  nature  wholly  unworkable ;  that  remedies  were 
at  the  first  not  applied  and  from  an  early  date  even  inapplicable ; 
that  Rome's  extended  suzerainty,  howsoever  acquired,  hastened,  though 
it  did  not  originate,  her  decline;  while  econonaic  causes  co-operated 
with  constitutional,  if  they  co-operated  only.  Primarily  the  cause  of 
downfall  was  the  normal  development  of  the  Roman  Constitution. 

The  Roman  Constitution  is  of  course  not  to  be  described  in  its 
leni-th  and  breadth  and  height,  within  the  narrow  limits  of  this  essay. 
But  its  main  defects  are  not  hard  to  define.  It  was  not  a  rigid  con- 
stitution,  still  less  a  flexible  one ;  and,  with  the  faults  of  both,  it  pos- 

sessed  the  advantages  of  neither.  It  P'-^S^^^^^i^V  l^^H  TnXress 
necessarily  in  the  direction  of  utter  incompetence.  It  failed  to  progress, 
but  its  stereotvpincr  was  always  of  a  fi^lse  tendency.  Its  liberalism  was 
inefficient  or  harmful,  even  when  sincere.  Its  conservatism  was  traught 
with  perhaps  even  greater  danger.  It  is  the  standing  monument  m 
history  of  logical  inconsistency,  unredeemed  by  practical  efficiency. 

These  allegations  we  shall  proceed  to  make  good.  '  As  long,  says 
Mommsen,  '  as  there  was  a  Roman  community,  in  spite  of  changes  ot 
form,  its  settled  principles  were :— that  the  magistrate  had  absolute 

1  On  one  solution  of  which  depend  Lucan's  primary  causes  of  Rome's  decline  : 
Invida  fatorum  series  stimmisque  negatiun  Stare  diu.    Phars.  I.  70.  i. 
In  se  ma^na  ruttnt.    Id.  I,  Si, 


^ 


i 


command;  that  the  council  of  elders  was  the  highest  authority  in  the 
state ;  and  that  every  exceptional  resolution  required  the  sanction  of 
the  sovereign,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the  community  of  the  people  '.' 
The  constitution  was,  as  Sallust  puts  it,  impermm  legitimuin  ^  a  contra- 
diction in  terms,  a  congeries  of  anomalies. 

How  then  did  the  Republic  for  nearly  500  years  preserve  her  con- 
stitution ?  Simply  by  shelving  it.  The  magistrate  was  autocratic,  but 
hedged  in  with  such  restrictions  that  he  in  general  ignored  his  great 
position  and  was  content  to  act  as  a  vestry-clerk.  The  senate  had 
wo  potestas,  but,  through  the  magistracy,  secured  m\ic\i  potefiiia.  And 
the  sovereign-people, — really  sovereign  in  Rome,  on  the  Austinian 
theory  or  any  other— being  incapable  and  moreover  good-natured, 
shut  its  eyes  and  ignored  speculative  politics.  Every  factor  in  the" 
government  enjoyed  either  more  or  less  than  its  constitutional  rights, 
never  those  rights  themselves.  No  factor  in  the  state  renounced  its 
rights  ;  conservatism  barred  the  way.  No  factor  performed  its  duties ; 
liberalism  obstructed.  And  the  natural  consequence  was  that  when  a 
time  of  strain  came,  there  came  also  an  era  of  factious  legislation,  which 
upset  all  things  constitutional,  save  and  except  the  pernicious  customs 
and  charters   on  which  the  three  orders  based  their  incompatible 

rights. 

The  machinery  broke  down  like  the  constitutional  systems  of  Poland 
and  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  The  constitution  proved  to  be  '  con- 
stituted anarchy ' ;  its  elements  were  all  so  absolute  as  to  be  out  of 
relation  one  to  another ;  and  abstract  freedom  from  limitations  is  con- 
crete amorphism.  To  borrow  a  metaphor,  the  branches  of  the  tree 
were  severed,  and,  when  in  complete  disjunction  from  their  common 
Hfe,  had  only  rottenness  before  them. 

The  main  theory  of  Roman  government  was  false.  A  vestry  where 
the  chairman  decides  absolutely,  and  where  the  members  of  the  vestry 
have  absolute  authority,  and,  moreover,  are  appointed  by  some  method 
which  is  neither  nomination  by  the  chairman  nor  election  by  the  rate- 
payers, nor  anything  which  will  in  any  way  bring  them  into  harmony 
with  chairman  or  parish,  represents  with  some  fidelity  this  republican 
system.  But  this  is  not  all ;  there  are  the  ratepayers  to  be  reckoned 
with,  who  also  have  an  absolute  voice  in  the  policy  of  the  board.  They 
elect  the  chairman,  but  they  elect  him  on  the  nomination  of  his  pre- 
decessor, who  may  refuse  or  accept  candidates  apparently  at  his  own 
sweet  will.  Further,  there  is  not  one  chairman  only,  but  at  least  two ; 
each  with  a  power,  more  or  less  under  control  of  custom  and  tradition 
it  is  true,  but  still  absolute.  And  finally  the  negative  of  any  chairman 
is  more  powerful  than  the  affirmative  of  a  colleague.  There  is  no 
mutual  responsibility,  and  no  common  action,  and  accordingly  there 
is  no  policy  in  the  stricter  sense.  And,  alas !  no  higher  power  from 
without  can  come  down  upon  the  vestry  and  compel  it  to  reform 
itself,  for  this  paradoxical  board  rules  the  whole  known  world. 

*  Hist.  Rom.   Eng.  Trans.,  Popular  Edition^  i.  cap.  5.  vol.  I.  p.  86. 

^  Sail.  Cat.  6. 


That  all  this  is  no  mere  extravagance  may  be  easily  shown  from 
the  facts.  Take,  for  example,  the  procedure  of  legislation.  Apart 
from  the  curiate  assembly,  which,  except  as  an  instrument  of  obstruc- 
tion to  measures  not  purely  legislative,  was,  before  Rome  attained  her 
highest  prosperity,  a  mere  formal  survival,  there  were  three  powers  to 
be  reckoned  with — magistrate,  senate  and  people ;  the  last  in  its 
centuries,  or  in  its  tribes  according  to  certain  traditional  regulations 
apparently  based  on  the  nature  of  the  bills  in  question  ^  Legislation 
proper  was  in  its  substance  vested  conjointly  in  the  senate  (or  rather 
in  the  magistrate  in  council)  and  in  the  people.  How  then  did  each 
factor  in  government  bear  its  part  in  legislation  ? 

In  practice,  though  not  in  theory,  every  bill  was  first  submitted  to 
the  senate.  A  bill  could  only  be  introduced  by  a  magistrate,  for  the 
senate  was  a  council  of  advice  merely,  and  could  not  originate.  But 
suppose  it  submitted  ;  it  was  discussed,  of  right,  by  the  princeps  senatus 
and  the  principal  magistrates,  and,  of  privilege,  by  such  other  senators 
as  the  presiding  magistrate  thought  fit  to  call  on  for  an  opinion,  and 
so  to  distinguish  from  the  pedan'i  or  silent  members.  Amendments 
might  be  directly  proposed  by  the  speakers,  and  irrelevant  views  on 
general  politics  ventilated.  The  bill  itself  might  be  dropped  by  its 
proposer,  or  he  might  constitute  any  of  the  sententiae  offered  a  sub- 
stantive motion.  If  the  meeting  were  not  adjourned  by  the  approach  of 
night,  and  the  motion  escaped  the  veto  of  the  tribunes  of  the  commons 
or  the  arbitrary  discretion  of  the  president,  it  might  proceed  to  a 
division  formal  or  informal,  and  if  adopted  by  discessio  or  otherwise,  it 
attained,  if  stopped,  the  extra-legal  position  of  a  senatus  auctoritas  '^,  or, 
if  not  stopped  by  hilercessio,  became  something  analogous  to  a  Greek 
Trpo^ouXfu/Mo,  a  senatus  consultum  which,  if  it  concerned  matters  of  mere 
temporary  administration,  was  law,  provided  that  a  magistrate  would 
and  could  enforce  it  ^  If,  however,  the  bill  dealt  with  constitutional 
and  not  administrative  questions,  it  was  referred  to  the  people. 

It  was  '  promulgated ' — exposed  for  a  legal  trinundinum  to  public 
criticism,  and  then  referred  to  the  comitia  where  it  was  introduced  by 
a  magistrate.  If  the  comitial  meeting  was  not  prevented  by  the 
spectio*  of  some  higher  magistrate  who  volunteered  de  caelo  servare 
and  so  by  a  religious  fraud  postponed  the  assembly  sine  die — and 
dies  comitiales  were  few  and  far  between — if  possible  a  vote  was  taken. 
If  possible  :  for  the  auspices  might  be  unfavourable,  the  weather 
report  ominous,  some  one  might  fall  with  epilepsy,  or  a  preceding 

^  The  distinction  o{  populi  comitia  tributa  and  plebis  comitia  tributa  would 
appear  untenable — (a)  because  the  authority  of  a  late  jurist  has  no  weight  as  against 
the  inference  from  contemporary  silence;  {b)  because  Festus  s.  v. populi  scitum 
may  be  held  as  a  positive  authority  against  the  distinction  ;  {c)  because  the  use  of 
populi  scitum  by  writers  under  the  empire  (e.  g.  by  Tac.  Ann.  III.  58)  seems  its 
normal  one. 

■''  Cf.  Cic.  ad  Fam.  I.  2,  a  motion  vetoed  by  C.  Cato  tamen  est  perscripta, 

'  E.  g.  the  restriction  on  liberae  legationes,  passed  Cicerone  cos^y  though  only  a 
Senatus  consultum^  was  fully  binding. 

*  Bibulus'  spcctio  against  Caesar  and  Sestius'  proposal  to  carry  on  a  permanent 
spectio  are  notorious. 


i 


'^■4 


concio  might  be  prolonged  till  sunset,  or  a  fraud  might  be  perpetrated 
like  that  which  saved  Rabirius  in  63  B.C.  However,  these  dangers 
tided  over,  the  populus,  which  had  no  representation,  and,  except  in 
condones  dominated  by  an  unenfranchised  mob  and  dependent  on  a 
magistrate's  will  \  no  discussion,  might  vote,  tributim  and  not  viritim^ 
its  simple  Uti  rogas  or  Antiquo,  and  still  the  bill  was  not  safe. 

For  here  too,  before  the  results  of  the  voting  were  declared,  the 
interposition  of  a  tribune  sufficed  not  merely  to  suspend  but  to  stop 
the  motion.  In  fact  the  whole  system  was  one  of  negation,  and  with 
such  legislative  machinery  constitutional  reform  was  naturally  im- 
possible. Not  only  had  the  old  order  a  prescriptive  and  presumptive 
superiority;  by  its  very  weight  it  blocked  reform-schemes.  And 
uniformly  Roman  government  worked  on  the  block  system. 

Practically  no  doubt  the  senate  could  and  did  find  a  magistrate 
willing  to  make  the  relationes  it  desired,  and  to  select  for  divisions 
such  of  its  sententiae  as  were  acceptable  to  the  majority.  It  could 
further  find  magistrates  to  enforce  its  consulta,  i.e.  to  make  them  law; 
for  the  magistrates  were  annual,  and,  even  if  not  senatorian  at  heart, 
a  magistrate  knew  that  his  future,  when  his  year  of  office  closed,  was 
largely  dependent  on  his  harmonious  co-operation  with  the  senate. 
But,  given  a  magistrate  hostile  to  the  senate,  he  could  paralyse  the 
supreme  council  throughout  his  political  career.  His  edicts  e.g.  as 
praetor  ran  as  law,  when  Senatus  consulta  which  he  refused  to  enforce 
did  not  run.  His  veto  as  tribune  or  his  collegal  intercession  -  stopped 
their  action  completely.  Positively  he  could  perhaps  do  little,  for  he 
had  colleagues  who  might  be  won;  but  one  negative  countervailed 
many  affirmatives.  If  others  were  absolute,  so  was  he.  The  col- 
lective responsibility  of  a  cabinet  was  as  yet  unevolved,  and  the 
magistracy  was  anything  but  unitary.  The  system  was  in  fact,  as 
Niebuhr  notes,  not  unlike  that  of  Prussia  before  the  rise  of  Harden- 
berg  and  Stein ;  and  as  the  latter  resulted  in  Auerstadt  and  Jena,  so 
did  the  former  in  Pharsalus  and  Actium.  For  the  senate,  de  facto 
supreme  in  legislation,  was  exposed  to  the  negative  of  any  tribune, 
a  weapon  secure,  save  in  the  face  of  national  danger,  to  any  party 
or  any  adventurer— an  incongruity  which  might  have  wrecked  a 
system  stronger  than  the  Roman. 

The  evolution  indeed  of  the  tribunate  of  the  commons  from  the 
right  of  individual  redress,  and  from  the  personal  inviolability  of  the 
leges  sacratae  was  a  natural  one  and  on  the  lines  of  general  con- 
stitutional progress.  If,  too,  plebeian  consuls  as  leaders  of  opposition 
might  exercise  a  constitutional  veto,^  why  not  extend  this  power  ?  but 
once  granted  the  tribunal  power  was  looked  upon  as  the  Palladium 
of  the  people  and  could  never  be  recalled. 

Accordingly,  in  the  interests  of  order  as  against  liberty,  crime  and 

*  Cf.  Cic.  ad  Att.  IV.  i.  6,  habui  concionem ;  omnes  magistratus  .  .  .  dederunt. 

*  Collegal  intercession  wasy  however,  extremely  rare.  Spectio,  Obnuntiatio  and 
purchased  tribunal  intercessions  took  its  place.  Yet,  cf.  the  case  of  the  coss.  of 
51  B.C.,  and  for  praetorian  intercession  cf.  Cic.  in  Verr.  I.  46. 

'  Cf  Mommsen,  Hist.  Rom.  11.  cap.  2,  vol.  I.  p.  386. 


murder,  bribery  and  treachery  were  employed,  and  the  Gracchi  and 
many  after  them,  hke  some  before  them,  perished  in  order  to  keep 
the  state-machinery  from  deadlock.  They  fell  martyrs  not  so  much 
in  the  cause  of  great  ideals  as  to  the  exigencies  of  government. 

For  the  rest,  the  union  of  senate  and  magistracy  during  Rome's 
struggles  for  hegemony  in  Latium,  and  for  existence  first  and  then 
empire  against  Carthage,  enabled  the  government  to  go  on.  The 
political  faine'ance  of  the  people,  in  its  changing  senses,  during  the 
great  wars  of  Rome,  the  financial  supervision  exercised  by  the  senate, 
and  the  impossibility  of  carrying  on  prolonged  foreign  wars  without 
an  organised  bureau  for  foreign  affairs,  such  as  was  the  senate, 
humbled  the  fuglemen  of  the  political  sovereign,  and  they  in  many 
cases  took  the  pay  of  the  nobility  and  did  the  senate  yeoman's 
service  \  The  marked  incapacity,  too,  of  the  popular  favourites — 
of  C.  Flaminius  at  the  Thrasymene  lake  and  of  INI.  Varro  at  Cannae — 
helped  to  make  the  senate  de  facto  a  strong  oligarchy.  It  was  the. 
old  houses,  the  Fabii  and  the  Scipiones,  that  made  Rome's  prosperity. 
It  was  that  Flaminius  who  had  ignored  the  senate  and  appealed 
directly  to  the  tribes  in  232  b.  c,  who  failed  ignominiously  against  the 
foe  over  whom  the  aristocratic  victors  of  Metaurus  and  Zama  pre- 
vailed. And  the  precedent  accordingly  of  Flaminius'  home-policy 
was  not  followed  till  the  days  of  Ti.  Graccb''°.  The  fact  however 
remains,  that  it  was  always  open  for  your  I  i.  Gracchus  or  other 
sociMist  agitator  to  follow  in  a  track  along  which  the  Lex  Hortensia 
gave  a  right  of  way. 

No  reform  was  carried,  for  none  seemed  necessary,  when  the  de 
facto  sovereign  could  rule  quietly.  Men  forgot  to  give  the  senate 
a  voice  which  could  make  itself  heard,  a  power  of  self-movement. 
It  was  not  an  a^x'?  <t»"io"fwf,  and  accordingly,  the  de  jure  sovereign 
was  able,  when  it  arose  in  its  might,  to  convulse  the  Republic  with  the 
struggle  of  popolani  and  nobili. 

The  family- policy,  too,  of  the  conqueror  of  Zama,  and  again  of  the 
IMetelli,  hastened  the  end  ;  but,  unless  the  senate  should  abdicate,  or 
occupy  an  unassailed  throne,  that  end  was  clearly  foreshadowed.  The 
'  Venetian  Government '  of  le  cabinet  inte'rieur,  which  existed  in  Eng- 
land just  before  the  American  War  of  Independence,  was,  by  the 
nature  of  the  case,  bound  to  destroy  the  House  of  Commons  or  to 
perish  ;  and  it  perished.  But  the  House  of  Commons  was  organised 
and  had  an  administrative  past ;  and  so  there  was  something  to  take 
the  place  of  the  Bute  Cabal.  In  Rome  there  was  nothing  to  super- 
sede the  senate,  save  the  ascendancy  of  individuals — of  Ti.  Gracchus, 
of  his  brother,  of  Marius,  of  Saturninus,  of  Cinna ;  possibly  of  Sul- 
picius,  of  Lepidus,  or  of  Catilina ;  lastly  of  Pompeius  or  of  Caesar, 
and  of  Antonius  or  of  Octavian. 

So  much  for  Senatorian  government  in  its  main  department — 
legislation.     Its  only  hope  was  in  some  dictator  who  should  make 

*   Viam  unam  dissoliicndac  tribuniciac  potestatis  per  coltemrum  intercessionem, 
Liv.  IV.  48. 


.  ''^^ 


it  sovereign  in  very  truth,  and  him  it  could  scarcely  have  found 
except  perhaps  in  Camillus,  Rome's  Scharnhorst  rather  than  her 
Stein.  The  man  was  not  to  be  found  later.  Scipio  Aemilianus  gave 
most  promise  and  he  died.  Sulla  was  too  late.  Others  had  not  the 
power,  or  not  the  patriotism,  or  not  the  inspiration.  Dictators  were 
viewed  with  jealousy.  The  decemviral  legislation  was  too  early  to 
substitute  code  for  veto,  and  was  moreover  wrecked  on  the  misconduct 
of  its  members.  The  only  hope  of  senatorian  government  was  a 
Sulla  before  Sulla,  a  man  to  limit  the  magistracy,  to  abolish  the 
tribunate,  to  swamp  the  comitia^  to  give  strength  and  articulation 
to  the  senate,  and  all  this  without  an  overweening  personal  ambition. 

Sulla,  it  is  said,  left  the  tribunate  imas^inem  sine  re^.  That  measure 
alone  might  m  earlier  days  have  saved  Rome.  But  the  time  had  gone 
by ;  the  imperial  period  had  come,  and  the  economic  ills  of  the  ill- 
nucleated  commons  were  drawing  to  a  culmination.  There  was  an 
ordo  equester  which  in  its  shortsightedness  preferred  misrule  and  a 
capitalistic  Saturnalia  to  a  strong  government.  There  were  pro- 
consuls who  in  the  provinces  had  got  beyond  senatorian  control. 
There  was  the  army,  too,  of  Marius — the  professional  army  of 
Napoleon,  not  the  national  militia  of  Camillus.  And  finally,  the 
secret  had  been  divulged,  in  part  by  Sulla  himself,  that,  in  the 
arbitration  of  Roman  political  controversies,  '  heaven  was  on  the 
side  of  the  big  battalions.'  The  senate  then  had  no  outlook  save 
in  the  direction  of  a  Caesar  and  his  fortunes ;  in  the  ascendancy  of 
a  master,  not  a  minister. 

But  if  the  possibility  of  a  prolonged  senatorian  government  was 
conditioned  by  the  chances  of  an  all  but  impossible  reformation,  what 
hope  was  there  elsewhere.?  Popular  government  in  Rome  had,  if 
feasible,  much  to  recommend  it,  both  as  the  restoration  of  a  de  jure 
sovereign,  and  as  an  advance  in  the  direction  in  which  the  splendid 
hopes  of  liberalism  have  always  looked  for  their  realisation.  But  was 
it  ever  possible  ?     The  answer  is,  necessarily.  No. 

Consider  the  elections,  as  conducted,  say,  in  the  second  century  b.c. 
They  represented  very  largely  the  powers  and  the  possibilities  of  the 
commons,  and  to  what  did  they  amount  ?  There  was  no  election  to 
the  legislature,  save  in  so  far  as  the  magistrates  were  called  to  the 
senate,  during  and  after  their  year  of  office.  The  summons  until  the 
time  of  Sulla,  when  concession  was  too  late,  rested  with  an  officer 
appointed  by  the  curies,  or,  practically,  and  at  last  even  nominally, 
by  the  senate.  The  legislature,  except  accidentally,  showed  no  con-, 
cession  to  the  principle  of  representation  even  in  a  rudimentary  form. 
Proposals  for  a  representative  senate  after  Cannae  were  rejected,  and 
perhaps  rightly,  but  at  any  rate  the  senate  gave  no  ground  of  hope  to 
the  sovereign  people. 

And  there  were  no  elections  to  the  Judicature,  save  in  the  single 
instance  of  Silvanus'  reconstruction  of  the  Varian  commission  in  e.g. 
89.     The  populus  had  no  interest  in  the  judicia  except  through  the 

*  Velleius  II.  30. 


I 


10 

praetors  themselves.  Judices  were  selected,  principally  from  the  senate 
and  the  equestrian  order,  in  proportions  varying  according  to  statutes 
passed  in  the  interests  of  one  or  other,  while  the  iribiini  aeraru\ 
whether  they  were  '  district  or  ward  presidents  ^ '  or  *  men  of  the 
census  originally  requisite  for  the  office  of  military  pay-masters  ^' 
were,  even  supposing  their  popular  character  to  be  beyond  dispute, 
of  too  late  a  date  (b.  c.  70)  to  subserve  any  popular  pretensions. 

There  remain,  then,  only  the  magisterial  elections.  In  how  far 
were  these  calculated  to  render  the  popular  cause  effective,  and  how 
far  did  they  promise  well  for  a  democratic  reformation  ?  Little,  if 
at  all.  In  theory,  if  not  otherwise,  the  populus  was  regarded  as  the 
sole  creator  of  the  permanent  executive,  but  this  availed  nothing. 
Of  the  censors  we  have  spoken.  Of  the  consuls,  praetors,  quaestors, 
aediles  and  tribunes,  we  can  only  say  that  their  popular  character  was 
in  the  best  days  of  Rome  delusive,  and,  in  the  decline,  even  fatal. 

It  was  in  the  best  days  delusive,  for  in  the  senate's  day  of  power 
the  magistrate,  the  minister  of  that  council,  actually  designated  his 
successor.  The  substantial  vote  of  the  populus  was  accounted  only  a 
conge  d'elire.  Nominations  were  rejected.  The  majority-candidate 
was  in  certain  cases,  e.g.  in  that  of  Marcellus  after  Cannae,  com- 
pletely ignored.  Nay,  so  far  did  the  theory  go,  that  the  legal  position 
of  Cinna^  when  from  87-4  b.  c.  he  designated  himself  and  his  col- 
lea2:ues  without  comitial  ratification,  was  unassailed  and  unassailable. 
Under  the  king  at  the  dawn  of  Roman  history,  or  under  the  Empire 
later,  such  procedure  was  natural.  In  the  republican  period  it  was 
artificial,  grotesque,  anomalous.  This  theory  made  the  task  of  the 
masters  of  the  state  easy,  and  the  constitution  of  the  principate  was 
determined  by  it.  But  it  made  the  pretensions  of  the  populus  to  real 
government  ridiculous. 

Nor  did  the  tribal  organisation  and  the  plebeian  tribunate,  by 
giving  solidarity  and  definite  articulation  to  the  popular  movement, 
fit  the  commons  for  a  ready  evolution  when  their  hour  should  come. 
Tribal  organisation,  whether  for  elections  or  for  general  political 
purposes,  was  local.  The  iribules  varied  in  number  throughout  the 
tribes.  The  number  of  iribules  from  any  one  tribe  present  at  any  one 
time  in  the  comiiiuvi  varied  still  more.  Rome  had  outgrown  primary 
assemblies  before  she  reached  her  zenith ;  country-tribes  were  carried 
by  packing,  and  city-tribes  by  caucuses,  sodalitates,  or  the  operae  of 
a  party-bravo.  The  respectable  rustic,  when  he  existed,  was  too 
occupied  to  appear.  The  respectable  townsman  was  overawed  by 
the  clubs  and  his  vote  was  swamped.  Country-members  might  and 
did  appear  to  support  the  candidature  of  a  municipalis,  or  to  secure  a 
favourite's  recall  from  just  exile,  and  no  doubt  there  was  an  earlier 
equivalent  to  the  concursus  Italiae  of  Cicero's  day ;  but  in  general  an 
imported  and  subsidised  clique,  resident  in  Rome,  carried  the  rural 
vote,  and,  at  least  as  the  decline  advanced,  a  band  of  libertini  the 
urban.     The   voters   were   the   outcome   of  economic   causes,  and 

*  Mommsen.  '  Madwig. 

'  Mommstn,  Rom.  Hist.  iv.  cap.  9.  vol.  111.  p.  325. 


^ 


Jl 

perhaps  not  even  representation  and  an  education  as  parliamentary 
electors  could  have  saved  city  and  country  from  being  swayed  by 
a  mob  which  was  all  that  the  worst  foes  of  the  populus  alleged  it 
to  be.  At  any  rate  representation  only  appeared  with  the  municipal 
system  of  the  empire,  and  the  tribal  organisation  seemed  to  demand 
that  Rome  should  be  a  city  pure  and  simple,  or  else  the  head  of  an 
imperial  federation  which  admitted  the  representative  principle.  And 
boih  were  impossible. 

The  tribunate,  too,  was  a  delusion.  It  stopped  the  machine,  but 
could  not  put  it  in  motion.  It  was  a  clog  of  formidable  weight,  but 
it  was  not  a  motive-force.  The  people  became,  from  economic  reasons, 
demoralised,  and  the  possession  of  powers  purely  obstructive  and  not 
under  due  control  still  further  demoralised  them.  They  were  harmed 
rather  than  helped  by  their  protagonists. 

Again,  the  centuries,  which  were  nominal  populus  and  theoretical 
sovereign  were  not,  until  the  very  end,  completely  emancipated  from 
senatorian  control.  Even  after  the  formal  ft9-ro-S?;/iOTt*ca)Tfpoj/  remo- 
delling^ of  241  B.C.,  they  were  dominated  by  the  weahhier  classes. 
The  tribes  nii^ht  be  managed  by  agents ;  the  centuries  were  managed 
by  interests.     Both  decayed  together. 

The  enfranchisement  of  Italy  swamped  both — the  tribes  directly, 
the  centuries  indirectly  from  the  breakdown  of  their  raison  d'etre  in 
the  citizen-army,  which  from  a  privilege  became  a  burden,  and  from 
a  burden  a  burden  shared  and  diffused  with  an  extension  of  rights 
which  left  the  organisation  hopeless.  Sulla,  accordingly,  was  right 
in  \Q2i\mg populus  and  plebs  to  their  natural  atrophy.  Only  in  restriction 
within  the  pomoerium,  or  in  representation  throughout  the  empire  was 
there  any  hope  for  popular  government. 

And  when  the  elections  were  real  and  popular,  they  were  fatal. 
While  decent  men  stood  aloof  from  politics,  the  mob  elected  adven- 
turers. The  elected  sold  themselves  to  the  senate,  from  which  alone 
they  had  a  career  to  hope  for ;  or  they  worked  for  private  aims  and 
earned  a  fortune  or  received  a  quietus ;  or  they  were  sincere  and  set 
themselves  in  antagonism  to  the  system,  and  the  clumsy  machine 
crushed  them.  Nor  did  the  last  benefit  the  state  more  than  the  first ; 
for  reform  inevitably  degenerated  into  open  revolution — it  was  a  dis- 
turbance of  that  very  unstable  equilibrium  which  alone  made  any 
government  under  the  old  constitution  possible.  Reform,  from  the 
popular  side,  unless  it  took  forms  which  Roman  antiquity  never 
dreamed  of,  meant  only  the  surrender  of  the  state  to  the  club-law  of 
a  mob  more  unreasoning  than  the  Parisians  of  Robespierre ;  it  de- 
stroyed the  ascendency  of  its  Girondists,  but  it  was  to  be  convulsed 
by  2ii\y  parli  Thermidorien,  and,  when  the  sword  superseded  the  club, 
was  to  be  mastered  by  its  Napoleon. 

What  then  were  the  possibilities  of  the  populares  ?  To  legislate  by 
plebiscites  which  senate  and  magistrate  and  army  disallowed  or  over- 
rode.    To  elect  in  farce,  or  to  set  up  a  traitor  to  his  party,  or,  worst 

*  Dionys.  IV.  21  j  Livy  I.  43. 


12 

of  all,  to  evoke  a  firebrand  who  found  his  logical  policy  in  nihilism ! 
To  veto  government-proposals  through  the  tribunate,  and  to  carry 
none  of  their  own.  To  be  dominated  by  a  mob  or  a  coterie ;  to 
follow  adventurers ;  and  to  lose  by  every  victory  !  And  finally,  to  be 
dissolved  by  extension ;  to  be  swamped  by  the  alien  interests  of  the 
Italian  townships;  to  lose  their  own  self-respect;  and  to  greet 
with  acquiescence  and  perhaps  satisfaction  the  destruction  of  their 
bauble  sovereignty!  The  popular  cause  in  Rome  was  barren  or  pro- 
duced monstrosities. 

The  senatorian  party  was  not  unfruitful,  but  it  found  its  fruits  de- 
stroyed. It  had  not  the  powers  it  assumed  and  it  failed  to  legalise 
them,  or  to  indemnify  itself  for  its  usurpations.  For  a  time  it  governed 
well ;  for  it  could  govern,  whereas  the  populus  could  not.  But  it 
reigned  through  purchased  ministers  and  borrowed  powers.  Hence, 
when  the  populus  attained  political  consciousness  without  political 
maturity,  a  terrible  reckoning  was  exacted  for  senatus  consulta  ultima^ 
and  for  martyred  tribunes,  for  wars  which  in  the  interests  of  a  mer- 
cantile aristocracy  were  slave-hunts,  and  for  taxes  which  were  violence 
and  robbery.  The  machinery  of  the  two  comitia  was  rusty  and  im- 
potent to  produce,  but  it  could  work  by  Mamilian  rogations  and  the 
like;  it  could  try  Rabirius  and  could  banish  Cicero.  The  govern- 
ment had  always  the  awkward  monster  to  reckon  with,  not  as  a  volonte 
generaie,  but  as  a  factor  in  the  actual  regulation  of  political  detail. 
The  populares  destroyed  the  only  strong  republican  government  that 
Rome  had  or  could  have.  The  time  for  any  efficient  power  to  step 
in  and  demolish  or  transform  at  last  came. 

But  what  of  the  magistracy?  and  especially  of  the  higher  magis- 
trates, consuls,  praetors,  censors .?  They  had  many  advantages  for 
forming  a  strong  government.  The  consuls  were  a  colhgium  with  the 
absolute  powers  of  the  expelled  kings,  and  the  senatorian  diet  was 
their  co?tcilium  and  only  their  concilium.  The  populus  was  in  practice 
dominated  by  the  nobiUs  ox  pair es,  or,  at  the  least,  by  the  conscripti, — 
senators  enrolled  from  the  moneyed  classes, — whose  interests  and 
whose  power  were  in  strict  subservience  to  the  council  of  state.  What 
was  there  then,  in  theory,  which  prevented  these  magistrates,  even  in 
the  very  earliest  times,  from  ruling  Rome } 

There  were,  in  the  first  place,  certain  limitations.  Their  imperium^ 
i.e.  their  supreme  polesias,  was  legitimum  or  controlled  by  charter. 
The  appellatio  to  the  centuries  or  citizen-army,  in  matters  of  life  and 
death,  and  dependence  on  the  council  (as  reipublicae  custos,  or  the 
permanent  element  in  the  constitution),  were  drawbacks,  but  perhaps 
salutary  drawbacks  to  efficient  autocracy.  And  beside  these,  there 
were  graver  checks  and  counterchecks.  The  executive  was  not,  as  is 
sometimes  inaccurately  stated,  '  monarchy  in  commission,'  for  the 
consuls  were  co-equal  and  without  the  union  of  a  common  policy. 
They  were  not  a  committee  or  cabinet  appointed  to  carry  out  a  cer- 
tain political  programme.  They  were  rather  Ishmaels,  fighting  each 
for  his  own  hand.  They  were  two,  and  co-ordinate;  a  fatal  number 
even  on  a  rural  commission  of  the  peace.     The  negative  of  either  was 


y 


\ 


^ 


^3 

sufficient  to  paralyse  the  positive  efficiency  of  the  other.  The  only 
practical  solution  therefore  was  a  division  of  labour  which  left  each 
less  absolute.  Not  that  there  w^as  anything  approaching  to  a  depart- 
mental system,  for  each  was  judge,  general,  and  everything  else.  But, 
by  a  tacit  agreement,  one  would  take  the  w^ar-department,  the  other 
the  home-policy;  only,  always  with  the  consciousness  that  his  colleague 
might  invade  his  sphere  of  public  business,  and,  e.g.,  establish  a  rival 
court  of  equity  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  forum.  It  recalls  irre- 
sistibly the  Prussian  system  of  foreign  politics  in  1806,  with  two 
ministers,  one  treating  with  France,  the  other  with  the  Czar.  In  the 
early  days,  too.  it  was  often  open  war  between  the  two  absolute  mon- 
archs.  For  a  long  time  plebeian  and  patrician  consuls  were  ipso  facto 
deadly  enemies.  Hence  arose  the  senatorian  ascendancy  and  the 
triumphant  policy  of  260-167  B.C.  The  populus  was  many-headed 
and  puzzle-headed ;  the  magistrates  were  rivals,  or  were  forced  into 
rivalry;  and  the  senate  reigned. 

There  were  also  two  further  limitations  to  magisterial  power,  which 
from  the  first  played  into  the  hands  of  the  senate.  Firstly,  the  con- 
sulship was  an  annual  office,  and,  for  re-election,  it  was  necessary  to 
gain  either  the  assembly  or  the  senate ;  while,  further,  the  continuity 
of  a  war-policy  or  a  finance-scheme  could  only  be  secured  by  a  rela- 
tively permanent  bureau.  In  the  senate,  the  policy  of  Rome  was 
iralaiicia.  And,  secondly,  while  absolute  in  the  field,  in  Rome  the 
consul  laid  aside  an  important  part  of  his  ivperium,  the  jus  gladii, 
and  this  restriction  involved  not  only  the  appellate  jurisdiction  o^  the 
populus,  but  also  the  defencelessness  of  the  magistrate.  Only  in  the 
camp  was  a  consul  absolute ;  at  home,  his  absolutism  was  tempered 
by  his  many  dangers.  Each  consul  enjoyed  the  position  of  the 
Junior  Spartan  King. 

Wilh  the  growth,  too,  of  the  senate's  power,  the  potestas  of  the 
magistrate  underwent  further  modifications.  The  veto  of  the  tribunes 
was  a  concession  to  the  popular  party  against  the  senate,  but  other 
restrictions  came  from  the  aristocraiic  side.  A  custom  grew  up  of 
suing  for  each  successive  office  at  a  certain  age,  with  a  practical  pro- 
hibition of  re-election  within  certain  periods.  The  usage  also  obtained 
of  recognising  the  eligibility,  for  the  higher  offices,  of  those  only  who 
had  passed  the  lower.  These  traditions,  though  not  consolidated 
into  statute-law  till  the  lex  annolis  of  Tappulus  (b  c.  180),  were  current 
long  before,  and  controlled  the  magistracy,  in  the  interests  of  the 
senate.  An  obnoxious  magistrate  found  himself  blocked  at  each  of 
the  lower  stages.  His  candidature  was  rejected ;  his  election  vitiated ; 
and  so  the  senate  vanquished  him. 

Again,  the  elections,  since  they  had  reference  at  once  to  civil  and 
military  office,  were  often  determined  to  the  senate's  advantage  by 
the  exigencies  of  the  time.  The  system  which  called  Crassus^  from 
the  woolsack  to  take  the  field  against  Spartacus,  while  it  obviously 
made  the  creation  of  a  Tyrannis  more  easy,  favoured,  in  general, 
senatorian  ascendancy.  A  good  soldier  of  the  Moreau  stamp  would 
take  the  lead  in  time  of  war,  and  would  be  content  to  receive  his 


14 

politics,  cut  and  dried,  from  the  council.  A  clever  administrator  of 
the  Rewbel  type  would  take  the  helm  in  times  of  peace,  but  would,  if 
called  upon  to  conduct  a  campaign,  be  only  too  glad  to  stand  well 
with  the  powers  that  were,  and  to  have  his  shortcomings  condoned  at 
home. 

The  magistrate,  then,  though,  as  king,  superior  to  the  other  pieces 
on  the  board,  was  for  the  present  harmless  in  aggression.  His  royal 
brother  was  his  foe,  and  the  pawns  and  higher  authorities,  though 
powerless  if  the  kings  refused  to  play,  threatened  a  chronic  check- 
mate. It  was,  to  take  another  illustration,  as  pretty  a  state  of  deadlock 
as  the  famous  scene  in  *  The  Critic' 

But  yet,  in  the  consulship — for  the  censorship  was,  if  first  in  dig- 
nity, inferior  in  power,  and  the  remaining  magistracies  were  but  step- 
ping-stones— there  were  signs  of  a  great  future.  The  populus  had 
only  jura  without  the  power  of  political  self-development.  The 
senate,  though  organised,  had  only  auctoritas^  and  was  obliged  to 
work  through  others — in  fact  through  the  magistrates;  the  consuls, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  only  limited,  and  their  limitations  were  obvious 
and  partial.  If  only  circumstances  favoured,  limits  might  be  tran- 
scended. 

And  circumstances  did  favour.  Continuous  wars  made  consuls 
more  absolute,  because  more  often  in  the  field.  The  acquisitions  of 
war  made  provincial  governors  necessary,  and  who  so  fitted  as  the 
ex-supreme  magistrate  t  The  whilom  vestry-clerk  or  lord-justice  or 
lord-mayor  found  himself  now  a  pasha.  He  was  still  limited  in  time, 
for  his  tenure  of  power  was  for  one  year,  and  in  space  to  his  province, 
for  in  Rome  he  was  only  a  civilian  still.  Moreover  his  army  was  civic. 
He  had  to  wait  years  between  his  first  and  second  opportunities.  He 
was  financed  by  the  senate,  checked  by  the  quaesiiones,  and  only  really 
powerful  among  subjects. 

How,  then,  to  pass  beyond  the  limits }  The  decay  of  the  national 
army,  due  to  economic  causes,  led  to  the  formation  of  the  cohortial 
army  by  Marius.  The  needs  of  the  Jugurthine  and  Cimbric  wars 
called  for  a  relaxation  of  the  lex  annalis.  The  law  was  relaxed,  and 
armies  became  the  instruments  of  their  leaders.  The  financial  control 
of  the  senate  was  obviated  by  wholesale  plundering — even  by  the 
plundering  of  Rome.  The  quaestiones  dared  not  treat  a  proconsul 
militant  as  they  treated  a  Rutilius.  Armies  moved  from  province  to 
province,  and  the  tenure  of  commands  was  prolonged  indefinitely. 
A  Strabo  or  a  Sulla  was  absolute.  Sulla  legislated  against  the  change, 
and  made  the  senate,  once  in  Roman  history,  a  power  as  well  as  an 
authority ;  and  the  new  constitution  lasted  twelve  years.  Then  came 
the  imperium  coordinatum  aequuni,  and  finally  the  imperium  ffiajus,  for 
long  periods  or  for  life  ;  and  the  magistrate  stood  supreme  and  absolute, 
with  his  full  imperium,  in  and  out  of  Rome.  The  elder  Rome  had 
perished ;  the  Rome  of  the  Caesars  begun. 

Surely  the  constitution  of  Rome  was  a  paradox  of  the  wildest  kind. 
Magistrates  circumscribed  and  shackled,  and  hampered  each  by  the 
other,   and  yet  the  sole  efficient  power ;    without  any  collegiate  or 


i 


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< 


^^ 


15 

continuous  policy,  and  yet  absolute !  The  council  powerless,  and  yet 
dominus  publici  consilii ;  in  diplomacy  and  finance,  the  only  repository 
of  tradition  and  experience,  and  yet  unable  to  confer  any  plenary 
powers  ;  unable  to  save  a  dictator  from  evdwrj,  or  to  authorise  a  Cicero 
to  put  to  death  a  rebel !  And  finally  the  popu/us,  without  political 
dynamic  and  acting  only  as  the  tool  of  adventurers  and  charlatans, 
and  yet  sovereign  !  wuth  a  programme  aiming  not  at  political  possi- 
bilities, but  at  democratic  ideals ;  always  struggling  to  carry  the  out- 
posts of  officialism  against  the  nobiles^  and  ever  finding  its  position 
worse ;  scaling  the  heights  of  the  consulship  and  censorship  at  infinite 
pains,  and  seeing  its  plebeian  families  ennobled,  and  forthwith  solid- 
arised  with  the  old  nobles  into  a  new  aristocracy  of  optimates^  and 
these  no  longer  legally  assailable  ;  and  yet  this,  Populus  Romanus,  the 
people  that  won  Latium,  and  Italy  and  the  world ! 

The  magistracy  had  before  it  the  prospect  of  changed  times,  in 
which,  untrammelled,  it  should  vindicate  its  absolutism.  The  senate 
looked  for  an  emancipator,  who  should  be,  at  once,  all-powerful  and 
all-subservient,  and  who  should  make  its  de  facto  sovereignty  real  and 
its  auctoritas  articulate.  And  the  populus  looked  to  become  a  power 
in  a  city-state  or  by  its  representatives  in  an  empire ;  the  one  ideal 
was  in  the  past,  and  history  rarely  retrogresses ;  the  other  in  the  future, 
and  nature  never  anticipates.  It  was  natural  that  the  magistracy 
should  survive,  for  it  was  the  fittest.  But  it  survived  transformed; 
and  in  the  struggle  for  existence  the  republic  declined  and  fell.  From 
the  nature  of  its  constitution  it  was  inevitable  that  Rome  should  cease 
to  be  a  republic. 

The  share  of  external  history  in  the  decline  is  easy  to  trace,  and 
need  scarcely  occupy  us  long.  Decay  was  necessarily  arrested  by 
every  struggle  with  foes  without.  In  the  struggle  for  life,  in  Italy, 
when  Rome  was  still  a  city-state  and  the  consuls  went  out  to  war,  like 
sheriff's,  at  the  head  of  the  city-trainbands,  the  collective  wisdom  of 
the  council  of  elders  was  of  the  greatest  weight.  Patriot  leaders  were 
necessary,  in  order  to  carry  out  the  counsels  of  the  senate ;  and,  under 
the  shadow  of  martial  law,  the  people  forgot  their  rights.  And  again, 
when  Rome  led  more  than  one  city  in  her  train,  the  same  exigencies 
prevailed ;  for  Italy  was  the  battle-ground,  not  only  of  states  but  of 
races.  When,  too,  peace  came  with  victory,  and  the  burdens  of  the 
poor  meant  slavery,  luckily  sovereign  proprietorship  came  too,  and 
economic  ills  were  for  the  time  staved  off;  while,  with  sovereignty, 
came  the  practical  separation  of  the  colleagues  at  the  head  of  affairs, 
with  the  vista  of  emancipation  for  each. 

The  senate  seemed  now  Hkely  to  go  to  the  wall,  under  the  pressure 
of  economic  troubles  deferred  but  not  remedied,  and  of  the  masterful 
insubordination  of  magistrates,  patrician  and  plebeian  alike.  But 
again  and  again  the  patriciate,  which  knew  '  neither  how  to  yield  nor 
how  to  enforce '  its  prerogatives,  transformed  by  the  decimation  of  the 
curies  into  the  most  obnoxious  of  class-interests,  was  compelled  by 
the  senate  to  give  way.  The  government  covered  their  retreat,  closed 
the  ranks  of  the  aristocratic  party,  healed  its  wounds  and  formed  a 


i6 

social  stratum,  from  which  alone  officialism  was  to  be  recruited. 
Opposition  magistrates  became  rare,  and  were  crushed  with  Machia- 
vellian energy.  The  senate's  rule  became  efficient  and  bade  fair  to 
become  permanent,  when  in  the  midst  of  prosperity,  in  the  lull  that 
preceded  the  Punic  wars,  the  pride  and  selfishness  of  the  caste  of 
optimates  seemed  likely  to  bring  down  the  aristocratic  power,  and  for 
ever. 

The  state  was  exposed,  on  a  sudden,  to  a  critical  movement,  such 
as  has  often  destroyed  even  strong  oligarchies.  Novi  homines  had 
almost  established  a  hwaurda  on  the  ruins  of  the  senate,  when  fortune 
saved  the  curia,  and  perhaps  the  republic.  Fortune  takes  strange 
shapes,  and,  in  this  case,  it  appeared  in  the  shape  of  internecine  war 
for  commercial  primacy  in  the  Mediterranean.  The  power  that 
threatened  Rome  was  Carthage,  a  power  constitutionally  as  impotent 
as  Rome  ;  and  the  struggle  revived  senatorian  prestige.  A  first  war 
passed  off  successfully,  and  the  result  was  a  new  care  and  a  new 
possession  in  Sicily.  A  second  war  ensued,  and  one  which,  but  for 
the  senate,  must  have  ended  fatally.  The  second  Punic  war  was  one 
of  those  struggles  in  which  personal  genius  confronts  national  power, 
and  only  the  diplomatic  ability  and  resolute  demeanour  of  the  senate, 
and  the  unwearying  patriotism  of  the  senatorian  champions,  prevented 
Hannibal  from  crushing  Italy,  as  Napoleon  did  Germany.  But  where 
a  Flaminius,  a  Varro,  and  a  Minucius  failed,  a  Paullus,  a  Fabius,  a 
Nero  and  a  Scipio  justified  the  senate's  confidence,  and  carried  out 
the  senate's  policy,  and,  at  Zama,  Rome  conquered,  and  the  two 
Spains  were  added  to  her  empire.  The  political  ideal  at  that  time 
was  senatorian  rule,  bv  means  of  ministers  of  state.  Economic  and 
social  grievances  were  hushed,  and  the  voice  of  the  tribunes  was  seldom 
heard.  The  Scipiones,  not  men  of  original  genius,  but  men  of  ad- 
ministrative talents,  carried  out,  in  numerous  family-consulships,  the 
senate's  will.  No  one  thought  of  reform,  for,  when  all  were  agreed, 
what  need  to  abolish  the  effete  and  shelved  constitution  .^  This  absence 
of  reform  and  of  party  measures,  as  distinct  from  personal  impeach- 
ments, is  the  leading  feature  of  Rome's  constitutional  history  from 
Zama  to  Pydna. 

But  political  shortsightedness  was  to  find  its  punishment  in  the 
revival  of  constitutionalism,  and  in  the  awakening  of  the  dormant 
populus  and  its  sovereignty.  Ti.  Gracchus,  in  his  renewal  of  the  full 
powers  of  the  tribunate,  and  in  his  revival  of  long  obsolete  land-legis- 
lation, was  to  show  the  senate,  that  its  fancied  security  was  not  safety. 
The  burning  question  of  the  day,  however,  was  not,  for  the  present, 
reform,  but  the  vexed  problem  of  nationalism  as  against  imperialism. 
Was  Rome  to  be  the  head  of  an  Italian  nation,  with  a  protectorate  in 
Sicily  and  the  Spains,  or  was  she  to  aim  at  world-empire  ? 

To  this  question  the  answer  of  the  senate,  and  of  the  hereditary 
officials  of  the  Scipionic  circle,  was,  that  Nationalism  was  Rome's 
truest  policy.  And  rightly  so ;  but  the  answer  of  circumstances  was 
Imp)erialism.  The  importance  of  the  solution  rested  in  this  :  the 
vestry  or  corporation  could  not  undertake  empire,  for  empire  involved 


'       < 


i 


J 


17 

at  once  the  emancipation  of  the  magistracy  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
populus  ;  i.e.  the  great  rival  of  the  senate  in  the  constitution  would  be 
unchained,  and  the  only  countervail  would  be  destroyed.  This  is,  in 
substance,  the  reason  why  the  judgment  of  the  Scipionic  coterie,  of 
which,  in  the  next  generation,  Polybius  is  the  exponent,  was  radically 
right ;  that  Rome  must  remain  urbs  Roma,  a  city-state,  mistress  of 
Italy,  with  an  extended  protectorate,  but  not  an  empire.  For  only 
thus  could  the  senatorian  government  subsist.  History  falsified  the 
hopes  of  the  party,  while  it  justified  their  decision.  In  the  mouth 
of  Cicero  the  catchword  imperiuin  civile  is  claptrap)  and  an  anachronism, 
for  then  the  possibility  of  a  government  so  confined  that  magisterial 
ambition  could  form  no  dreams,  so  large  that  a  popular  mass-meeting 
would  be  bewildered,  was  no  longer  a  question  of  practical  politics. 
The  third  Punic  war  had  settled  the  question  for  ever. 

And  so  we  return  from  our  digression.  In  the  third  war  with 
Carthage  new  provinces  were  added.  Wars  in  Greece  augmented 
the  empire  further,  and  then  in  rapid  succession  state  after  state  fell  in, 
and  the  Roman  Republic  ruled  the  w^orld.  But  the  struggle  exhausted 
her.  Her  depopulation  bade  fair  to  prove  fatal.  Italy,  therefore,  be- 
came, more  and  more,  the  recruiting-ground  of  Rome,  and  the  sharers 
of  her  conquests  claimed  to  share  her  power.  This  was  one  of  the 
planks  in  Gains  Gracchus'  platform — Italian  franchise.  And  if  he 
knew  what  he  meant,  or  if  he  meant  representation  of  the  municipia, 
he  was  right ;  but  he  failed.  Then  came  the  breakdown  of  govern- 
ment, under  the  combined  influence  of  economic  troubles  at  home  and 
provincial  mismanagement  abroad,  and  Marius,  called  to  the  head  of 
Rome's  army,  found  it  necessary  to  make  concessions.  But  more 
was  demanded ;  and  there  ensued  the  Social  war,  which  resulted  in 
the  enfranchisement  of  Italy.  And  the  enfranchisement  was  such  as 
to  disorganise  the  populus  without  strengthening  it.  Now  was  the 
senate's  opportunity ;  but  the  senatorian  government,  too,  was  dis- 
organised. Marius  had  forced  his  way  to  the  top  in  opposition  to  the 
family  officialism  of  the  Metelli,  and  had,  in  rising,  shown  the  weakness 
of  the  senatorian  party.  And  the  reasons  for  Marius'  ascendancy  had 
shown  that  the  optimates  had  not  the  justification  of  good  management. 
In  fact,  the  official-class  had  in  provincia  consoled  themselves  for 
restrictions  in  Rome.  Misrule,  and  consequent  disaster ;  w-ars  pro- 
voked by  Rome,  and  made  dangerous  by  Roman  poltroonery  and  cor- 
ruption ; — all  this  showed  the  inefficiency  of  the  central  bureau  ;  while 
all  its  prestige  had  fallen  with  the  elevation,  by  Gains  Gracchus,  of 
the  ordo  equester,  the  most  mischievous  class  to  entrust  with  political 
power. 

Accordingly  the  civil  war  followed,  and  if,  at  its  close,  Sulla  for  a 
moment  revived  the  declining  power  of  the  senate, — and  with  the 
senate  republican  government  must  stand  or  fall, — yet  the  death  of 
the  dictator  was  the  death-sentence  of  the  commonwealth.  No  con- 
cordia  ordinum  such  as  was  Cicero's  policy,  no  confession  of  faith 
to  the  effect  that  office  was  nominally  his,  but  really  theirs,  could 
save  the  state ;   for  the  time  for  the  toga  had  gone  by.     The  Marian 

B 


i8 

army  had  been  levied ;  the  proconsulars  had  broken  loose  ;  and  no 
respect  iojus  or  auctoritas  remained.  The  watchword  of  the  future 
was  Imperium  ;  *  Republican  Rome  conquered  the  civilized  world,  but 
kept  it  only  by  ceasing  to  be  a  republic  \' 

*  It  would  be  easy,'  says  Hume,  in  his  essay  *  Of  Refinement  in 
the  Arts,'  '  to  prove  that  writers  mistook  the  causes  of  the  disorders 
in  the  Roman  state,  and  ascribed  to  luxury  and  the  arts  what  really 
proceeded  from  an  ill-modelled  government  and  the  unlimited  extent 
of  conquests.'  To  the  empire,  for  which  the  main  problems  were 
depopulation  and  the  gold-shrinkage,  Hume's  words  do  not  apply,  but 
of  the  republic  they  are  doubtless  true.  And  the  more  essential  part 
of  the  review,  'ill-modelled  government,'  we  have  described.  We  have 
narrated  too,  in  part,  how  conquest  modified  and  dissipated  the  civic 
ideal  of  the  commonwealth, — ov  yap  fK  ficVa  ^vpiddtov  ttoKis  tn  (o-tlv^. 

Have  we,  however,  done  enough  to  demonstrate  the  utter  hopeless- 
ness of  the  position  ?  Surely  we  have  as  yet  only  touched  on  the 
complex  economic  evils  which  acted  on,  and  were  reacted  upon  by, 
constitutional  deficiencies  ;  and  we  have  as  yet  only  told  the  story 
of  Rome's  extended  acquisitions  without  in  any  way  proving  their 
necessity.  To  proceed,  then.  Of  these  two  points  the  latter,  perhaps, 
should  take  precedence,  as  more  immediately  the  determinant  of  con- 
stitutional tendencies,  and  as  earlier,  historically,  in  reaching  its  cul- 
mination. The  former,  too,  will  fall  more  directly  into  its  place  in 
connexion  with  that  demoralisation  of  Roman  society  which  was  the 
beginning  of  the  end.  Without  further  justification,  then,  we  go  on  to 
treat  of  the  natural  character  of  Imperialism,  as  the  outcome  of  Roman 
history. 

Rome  starts  in  history  as  a  city-state,  rather  commercial  than 
militant.  We  are  not  concerned  to  disentangle  its  origines  from  the 
complexus  of  myths  with  which  they  are  ravelled,  but  we  seem  to  see 
vaguely  that  it  is  as  an  emporium  for  Latium  that  Rome  first  be- 
comes important.  Now  for  a  commercial  city  there  is,  especially  in 
its  infancy,  the  greatest  danger  from  competitors ;  and  unless  it  be 
beyond  the  reach  of  competition,  as  was  Corinth,  it  must  perforce 
become  military.  Athens  and  Aegina  fought  to  the  death,  and  Rome 
had  like  deadly  struggles.  To  preserve  her  trade,  then,  she  became 
other  than  a  trader.  She  was  fortunate  to  begin  with.  The  Tuscan 
power,  which  decimated  her  curies  in  many  a  campaign,  and  which 
forced  the  burgesses  to  extend  their  burdens  and  rights  to  the  cen- 
turiate  army  and  assembly,  and  which  for  a  time  established  a  suzerainty 
over  the  little  Roman  community  (X^/xr;  r^r  Tvp^r/Wur),  luckily  dwindled 
and  decayed  before  the  Phoenicians,  and  left  inland  commerce  to 
Latium.  The  Latin  cities  yielded  to  Rome,  and  in  the  interests  of  her 
commercial  hegemony  a  military  supremacy  was  evolved. 

And  Italy  was  left  alone  in  the  struggle.  The  Phoenicians  of  Car- 
thage had,  after  the  decline  of  Etruria,  to  struggle  with  the  Western 
Greeks ;  and,  before  the  great  battle  began,  Rome  had  unconsciously 


*  Froude,  Oceana,  p.  3. 


*  Arist.  Nic.  Eth.  ix.  10. 


) 


4 


,»: 


*.i 


^9 

become  strong.  The  Gaul,  the  Italian  races,  the  Greeks  of  the  South 
felt  Roman  ascendancy.  The  Samnites  and  Pyrrhus  fought  an  irre- 
concilable struggle  for  life  against  Rome,  and  the  survivor,  like  the 
Polynesian  cannibal,  appeared  to  gain  the  strength  of  the  rivals  de- 
voured. In  her  worst  early  struggles  Rome  was  left  unassailed  by  the 
strong  nations.  The  Sicilian  tyrants  looked  to  Africa  for  their  foe, 
Alexander  of  Macedon  to  Asia ;  while  Punic  jealousy  saw  in  the 
Greeks— old  rivals  of  Tyre  in  the  Aegean— the  real  pretenders  to 
primacy  in  the  Mediterranean.  Pyrrhus  was  but  an  adventurer  as 
Brennus  had  been  but  a  barbarian ;  and  the  result  of  the  isolation 
of  the  Italian  war-dram.a  was,  that  Rome  became  a  city  at  the  head  of 
a  nation— a  metropolis  which  was  the  focus  of  all  Italy  Economic 
troubles  at  home  promoted  colonisation  ;  Italy  was  conquered  by  the 
plough  as  well  as  by  the  sword.  It  became  inevitable  that  Rome 
should  lead  Italy,  and  direct  Italian  policy.  She  might  be  protectress, 
or  suzerain  in  name ;  she  was  certainly  supreme  in  reality. 

Not  that  Rome  only  fought  on  the  defensive.  She  provoked  many 
wars,  but  the  first  casus  belli  was  usually,  nay  almost  always  from 
the  adversary.  Once  Roman  jealousy  or  pride  was  engaged  in  a 
conflict,  war  on  any  pretext  for  any  quarrel  ensued,  and  lasted  till 
Rome  triumphed.  It  was  not  as  in  Greece,  where  Athens  might 
lead  for  half  a  century,  fall,  and  again  from  time  to  time  take  the  lead 
till  the  absolute  enslavement  of  her  country,  or  where  Sparta  might 
exercise  an  hegemony  before  and  after,  and  all  but  efface  herself  in 
the  intervals.  It  was  necessary  that  Rome  should  conquer  or  perish. 
The  temper  of  her  people  was  of  such  a  metal  that,  when  involved  in 
war,  they  exhausted  themselves  in  their  effort,  and  could  only  yield 
when  dead  or  dying.  Hence  they  often  received  the  submission  of 
Joes,  less  distressed  and  straitened  than  themselves ;  and  hence  they 
never  made  a  disadvantageous  peace,— for  they  could  only  do  so  when 
the  treaty  should  mean  nothing  more  than  an  armistice  between  the 
living  and  the  dead. 

Rome  then  became  necessarily  the  powerful  sovereign  of  Italy,  and 
that  m  isolation  from  the  interests  of  Eastern  and  Southern  powers. 
I  he  war  with  Pyrrhus,  however,  brought  Roman  arms  southwards. 
Roman  commerce,  too,  guided  Roman  aims  southwards.  Italy  ap- 
peared incomplete  and  unsafe  without  Sicily :  and  in  Sicily  Rome 
was  brought  face  to  face  with  Carthage. 

The  issue  between  Rome  and  Carthage  was  simply  this :  Etruria 
has  passed  away ;  Tyre  and  Sidon  are  decayed ;  Egypt  is  not  maritime 
or  commercial ;  Greece,  formerly  terrible,  is  contracting  towards  her 
centre,  and  dying  in  her  extremities;  Carthage  and  Rome  alone 
remain  to  dominate  trade  in  the  Mediterranean.  Which  is  to  have  all 
the  profit  and  prestige  of  the  commerce  of  the  known  world  ? 

And  there  seems  to  have  been  but  one  answer.  Carthage  had 
reached  the  stage  at  which  Rome  is  seen  later,  just  before  the 
Jugurthine  war.  Her  armies  were  composed  of  socii,  or  semi- 
mercenaries,  and,  in  many  cases,  of  actual  mercenaries.  Her  council 
and  suffetes  were  as  inefficient  as  senate  and  consuls  after  the  Gracchan 

B  2 


ao 

disasters ;  her  people  were,  if  possible,  less  a  factor  in  politics  than 
the  Roman. 

Rome  was  just  verging  on  such  maturity  as  her  constitution  ad- 
mitted of.  Carthage  was  already  on  the  decline,  and  the  result  was, 
of  course,  the  victory  of  maturity  over  decay.  Had  Jugurtha  been  a 
Hannibal,  or  Hannibal  appeared  in  the  days  of  Scaurus  and  Albinus, 
i.e.  just  before  the  reforms  and  ascendancy  of  Marius,  the  event  might 
have  been  otherwise.  But  that  is  to  say :  had  Abdelkader  been 
Napoleon .  As  affairs  stood,  Rome  conquered  ;  and  the  conse- 
quence was,  the  undertaking  of  the  interim-administration  of  each 
several  province  which  Carthage  evacuated  in  her  retreat  upon  her 
bases,  of  Sicily  and  Spain ;  and  Spain  had  to  be  maintained  from  the 
second  to  the  third  Punic  war,  lest  a  new  Hannibal  should  renew  the 
dangerous  struggle.  Eastward,  too,  arose  troubles  calling  for  inter- 
ference. Rome,  partly  as  the  recipient  of  Carthage's  reluctant  con- 
cessions inter  vivos,  partly  as  the  heir  to  fallen  Carthage's  extensive 
empire,  became,  as  it  were,  without  intending  it,  an  imperial  power. 
In  the  same  half-conscious  dream  she  seemed  hurried  into  Greek  ac- 
quisitions, and  she  awoke  to  find  herself  queen  of  the  Mediterranean 
nations. 

Imperialism  was  now  a  necessity.  To  lay  down  empire  was  ut  altum 
dormiret,  to  court  the  sleep  of  death.  How  then  this  necessary 
imperialism — this  iron  crown  which  the  commonwealth  could  not 
resign  nor  yet  maintain — determined  the  destinies  of  Rome,  has  been 
shown.  Rome  had  not  the  political  genius  of  Athens  for  her  populus 
to  be  successful  in  ruling  her  empire,  nor  had  she  the  idea  of  the  city- 
state  ingrain  in  her  very  life  that  she  should  be  able  in  sfrict  civicism 
to  carry  out  Aristotelian  theory  to  the  letter.  Nor  was  Rome  Venice 
in  her  glory,  to  allow  the  commercial  ideals  of  a  mediaeval  aristocracy 
to  guide  and  control  her  policy;  for  Rome's  position  was  rather  deter- 
mined by  circumstance,  and  Rome  had  to  reckon  with  her  constitution, 
which  had  not  the  effectiveness  of  the  Venetian,  even  for  a  petty 
Venetian  administration.  Rome  was  Rome,  and  accordingly  extended 
conquest  resulted  in  the  utter  downfall  of  senatorian  usurpation  and  in 
the  disintegration  of  even  that  little  jurisdiction  which  rested  with  the 
populus,  while  the  magistrate  remained  to  assert  himself  uncontrolled, 
and  the  empire  was  formed,  the  principate  constituted  from  the  disjecta 
membra  of  the  republic.  Hence,  too,  because  of  the  natural  evolution 
of  the  empire  from  the  chaos  of  the  revolution,  the  autocracy  was 
apparently  '  a  bundle  of  old  offices,'  '  C(^sar  gouverna  d  abord  sous 
des  titres  de  magistrature\:'  '  Auguste  voulut  cacher  une  puissance 
nouvelle  sous  des  noms  connu  et  des  dignitds  ordinaires^'  and 
succeeded. 

But  the  success  would  have  been  of  a  very  different  kind  but  for  the 
co-operation  of  causes  which  may  be  classed  as  politico-economic, 
i.e,  as  concerned  with  '•  la  bonne  administration  de  la  maison  com- 
mune' on  the  social  side.      For  something  else  contributed  to  the 


21 


< 


*vf^ 


Montesquieu. 


St.  Evremond. 


makmg  and  expansion  of  Rome,  besides  her  original  constitution  and 
her  struggle  for  life.  Without,  indeed,  the  constant  mooting  of  ques- 
tions as  to  land-laws,  and  poor-laws,  and  population-policy  and  the 
hke,  the  progress  of  Caesarism  is  unthinkable.  To  mention  one 
essential  point  only,  in  which  the  modification  of  constitutional 
tendencies  is  marked,  the  army  of  the  revolution  was  created  by 
economic  rather  than  by  political  decadence.  In  the  shaping  of 
history,  then,  economics  and  politics  go  hand  and  hand;  and  to 
economic  elements  in  Roman  maladministration  we  naturally  next  turn. 

Economic  disaster  was,  if  possible,  more  inevitable  than  political  • 
for  the  constitution  was,  though  organic,  in  some  senses  an  artificially 
constructed  state-machinery— a  growth,  indeed,  and  yet  a  creation  • 
while  the  economy  of  the  state  was  absolutely  organic.  The  one 
might  have  been  conceivably  refitted,  the  other  had  to  be  reorganised 
Vitality  was  necessary  to  both,  but  less  to  the  political  than  to  the 
economical,  for  the  government  was  in  one  aspect  an  Z^avov,  in  which 
mainspring,  and  cogwheels,  and  friction  and  adjustment  were  objects 
of  attention.  The  social  life  of  the  nation  involved  rather  questions 
of  assimilation  and  growth  and  parasitism.  But  its  ra^ty  was  the 
original  idea  of  the  state,  and,  organic  or  not,  parasitism  was  not 
a  primary  element  in  its  life.  To  the  TroXiVew  then  politics  are  of  first 
economics  of  secondary  importance;  the  first  are  its  nature  the 
second  are  of  its  nurture.  And  yet  the  normal  eff"ect  of  an  imported 
virus  IS  to  kill.  We  shall  expect  to  find  then  that  economic  dangers 
tended  in  the  same  direction  as  political  difficulties. 

Rome,  we  must  bear  in  mind,  rose  and  fell  in  a  pre-economic  age 
'Happy,'  says  Macintosh,  'is  the  nation  that  has  no  political  philo- 
sophy,' but  the  position  is  only  clear  when  we  understand  by  it 
'  happy  IS  the  state  that  has  never  felt  the  need  of  scientific  solutions 
to  social  problems,  because  it  feels  no  pressure.'  It  was  fatal  to  Rome 
that  she  could  not  anticipate  history  and  apply  later  science  to 
contemporary  evils.  Her  errors  were,  for  her,  irretrievable.  Her 
reforms  were  empirical  and  superficial.  Her  reformers  were  often  her 
deadliest  foes.  In  a  word,  a  false  Siaatswirthschaft  was  antecedently 
her  natural  destiny. 

At  first,  as  we  should  expect,  no  social  question  as  distinct  from 
politics  appeared  in  Rome.  The  infant  city  under  its  kings  might 
agitate  the  questions  how  far  the  senate  ought  to  be  attended  to,  how 
far  the  curies  ought  to  have  a  voice  in  matters  of  state,  and  the  'like  ; 
but  the  king,  the  only  real  magistrate,  called  his  own  senate,  and 
It  was  his  instrument,  not  his  rival ;  he  had  in  the  senate  the  means  of 
a  majority  among  the  burgesses ;  he  was  limited  by  his  own  charters, 
but  the  fatal  constitution  had  not  appeared,  and  he  governed,  like  our 
mediaeval  kings,  without  a  thought  of  an  economic  revolution.  He 
felt  political,  he  did  not  appreciate  economic  tendencies.  The  deci- 
mation of  the  burgesses  in  war  might  lead  him  to  the  first  revolution, 
which  constituted  the  centuriate  army,  but  even  depopulation  needed 
no  population  policy.  There  was  folkland  or  bookland  enough  for 
all.     Rome's  griefs  had  not  begun,  and  '  every  rood  of  land  'main- 


2'Z 

tained  its  man/  But  in  after  times  the  quies  secura  of  these  days  was 
looked  upon  as  a  far  back  golden  age.  The  revolution  came.  The 
landless //t'^t'//,  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the  town  populace,  began  to 
grow,  and  to  receive  grants  of  folkland,  such  as  placed  them  on  a  level 
with  the  lower  classes  of  the  popular  army.  The  war  necessities  of 
the  state  solved  the  first  land- question  of  Rome  by  introducing  a  free 
policy  of  distribution,  which  gave  rights  in  exchange  for  burdens. 
And  the  military  successes  of  the  republic  in  the  environs  of  the  city 
secured  this  policy,  by  rendering  it  innocuous  to  the  burgesses,  who 
with  every  conquest  received  a  quid  pro  quo.  But  war  necessities 
waxed,  and  victory  was  often  anything  but  instantaneous.  Rome 
often  indeed  all  but  exhausted  herself  in  the  struggle.  How  fared  the 
small  freeholders,  whether  of  older  or  of  newer  tenure,  under  such 
conditions  ? 

Naturally  they  fared  badly.  As  yet  the  expedient  of  Sp.  Cassius 
was  the  only  one  that  occurred  to  would-be  reformers,  and  it  was  not 
enough.  The  citizen  was  called  on,  not  only  to  serve  in  purely  * 
defensive  operations,  but  also  in  aggressive  warfare ;  and  he  had  to 
pay  a  direct  war-tax,  the  tributum — an  advance,  but  an  advance  which 
ruined  the  smaller  ratepayers,  and  disordered  society  by  involving  the 
peasant  in  debt,  and  by  enabling  the  richer  classes,  senators,  and 
knights,  to  recoup  their  own  expenditure  in  taxation  by  usurious 
exactions  from  the  poor. 

And  not  merely  did  he  pay  this  double  tax,  for  himself  and  for  his 
usurious  banker,  in  an  advance  he  could  not  bear,  and  a  compound 
interest  which  made  the  advance  a  permanent  charge ;  but  he  left  his 
homestead  for  months  and  years  to  women  and  children  and  slaves. 
The  master's  eye  and  hand,  which  make  up  that  '  magic  of  property  ' 
which  '  turns  sand  to  gold,'  were  withdrawn  by  the  state,  and,  if  lucky 
enough  to  escape  '  the  blood-tax/  the  yeoman  spent  his  best  years  in 
the  field,  not  of  agriculture,  but  of  battle.  Peasant  properties,  valuable 
as  they  are,  if  naturally  evolved  throughout  a  country,  and  when  they 
are  a  real  possession  '  to  have  and  to  hold,'  were  ineffective  in  such  a 
case.  The  wealthier  orders  could,  through  their  bailiffs,  manage  large 
farms  with  profit,  even  when  themselves  absentees  on  foreign  service. 
The  poorer  could  not,  nor  could  they  forego  without  serious  distress 
the  profits  which  failed  them.  The  war-contribution,  or  rather  the 
interest  paid  at  heavy  rates  to  those  who  advanced  it,  would  have 
swallowed  up  their  gains  in  any  case.     As  it  was,  it  ruined  them. 

At  first  the  agricultural  distress  was  met  by  the  sale  of  small  pro- 
perties, which  fell  into  the  hands  of  embryo  capitalists.  But  this  only 
made  the  lot  of  those  farmers  who  held  by  their  lands  harder.  The 
small-holding  system  wals  doomed. 

The  spokesmen  of  the  people  attempted  to  maintain  it ;  the  martyr 
Cassius,  the  reformer  Icilius,  the  unhappy  INIaelius  and  others.  After 
every  success  in  war  the  polcy  was  renewed.  Veil  fell,  and  the  land- 
scheme  was  pushed  to  the  front  by  Camillus.  Even  the  protagonists 
of  ihe  senate  essayed  to  bring  into  practice  the  grand  system  of 
relief,  and  ihe  result  was  ^I.  IManlius. 


/ 


4 


■^ 


23 

Manlius  found  the  yeomanry,  on  whom  Rome's  victories  depended 
m  the  most  heartrending  condition.  Each  new  application  of  the 
grand  remedy  of  land-grants  only  made  the  peasant-occupier  more 
easy  to  enslave.  He  could  sell  out,  on  the  chance  of  a  new  grant 
or  he  could  be  sold,  addidus,  to  the  claims  of  his  creditor  As  a 
slave  he  might  be  treated  kindly,  for  domestic,  not  capitalistic,  slavery 
was  still  m  vogue,  and  he  would  not  go  to  war.  He  might  be  left 
to  farm  his  own  old  lands,  or  he  might  be  cut  to  pieces  by  his  pitiful 
creditors,  a  victim  to  a  parasitic  finance  scheme  of  the  state. 

Manlius  raised  the  standard  of  socialism  and  was  executed;  but 
he  had  introduced  a  new  panacea— usury  laws.  An  artificial  system 
of  utterly  meffective  land-grants  had  failed,  in  the  face  of  an  exchequer 
which  had  but  one  expedient  to  raise  its  budget,  the  tributum,  A  new 
cry  was  added  to  the  popular  vocabulary,  and  that  was  all. 

The  fall  of  Manlius  was  followed  by  a  land-grant.  The  Praenestine 
war  turned  the  new  coloni  into  mortgagees.  Military  colonisation 
was  the  next  step,  and  politically  an  efifective  one,  forerunner  of 
empire.  Economically  it  was  but  staving  off  the  evil  day.  It  made 
latifundia  more  secure  and  for  the  time  permanent.  It  induced  mort- 
gagees to  take  the  surrender  values  oii\i€\i  possessioties,  and  capitalists 
were  often  forced  to  become  farmers  on  an  extensive  scale.  It  was  a 
good  palliative,  where  radical  change  was  needed.  It  was  in  fact  a  ver 
sacrum,  an  expedient  which  never  yet  permanently  benefited  the 
old  country,  though  it  emancipates  the  needier  colonists. 

However,  a  time  for  more  efi'ectual  remedies  was  coming.  The 
wealthy  plebeian,  enriched  by  the  interest,  simple  and  compound  of 
his  investments  in  mortgages  and  loans,  was  anxious  to  grasp  at 
something  more  dignified  in  the  way  of  office  than  a  mere  tribunate. 
What  interest  had  he  in  bringing  aid  to  an  indebted  plebeian  against 
an  aristocrat.?  was  it  not  a  case  for  *  ka  me,  ka  thee'? 

The  wealthier  commoners  were  in  heart  patrician ;  their  ambition 
was  official  ascendancy.     But  how  to  obtain  it  ?    They  were  rejected 
at  the  elections  by  the  practice  of  nominatio  of  a  partisan  character 
on  the  part  of  the  nobles.     They  could  only  share  the  glories  of  the 
consulship  by  a  constitutional  right  to  one  place.     They  could  only 
get  that  right  by  a  popular  agitation.     That  popular  agitation  de- 
manded for  the  leaders,  ut  alter  consulum  e  plebe  crearetur ;    for  the 
followers,  ne  quis  plus  quam  D  Jugera  agri  possider€t\  and  the  lanx 
satura,  which  tacked  together  these  two  dissimilar  rogations,  was  the 
manifesto   of  Siolo   and   Sextius,  which,  after   ten   years   agitation, 
resulted  in  the  Sextio-Licinian  legislation  of  367  b.c.     Sextinus  was 
the  consul  elected,  and  the  once  popular  tribune  was  the  first  man 
condemned  for  violation  of  the  law  which  was  the  popular  side  of 
his  propaganda.     Such  a  charter  won  by  such  a  man  transformed 
the  political  and  economic  position  of  Rome.     The  aristocracy  of 
wealth  and  office  succeeded  to  that  of  birth.     The  latter  was  assailable 
as  prerogative ;  the  former  was  unassailable,  save  by  some  law  to  the 

*  Liv.  VI.  35. 


24 

effect  that  a  fiovus  homo  must  be  elected.  The  result  was  that  the 
senatorian  ascendancy  was  reinforced  from  the  opposing  camp.  The 
optimates  succeeded  the  nobiles,  and  presented  an  impenetrable  phalanx 
to  the  populares  who  were  all  that  were  left  of  the  plebeii.  And  so 
with  the  economic  change ;  it  was  important  because  private  property 
and  perpetual  tenancy  on  a  '  precarian '  basis  derived  from  the  regal 
period,  though  previously  all  but  identical,  now  became  thoroughly 
difierentiated.  As  in  England  bookland  and  folkland  were  all  but 
equally  secure,  though  state  or  king  never  surrendered  certain  rights 
in  the  latter  and  demanded  thegn-service,  so  Rome  in  the  greater 
part  of  her  state-land  given  in  *  possession '  claimed  still  an  interest, 
while  private  land  was  not  to  be  usurped  by  the  state.  It  was  the 
domain-land  which  was  affected  by  the  Licinian  scheme.  Henceforth 
it  became  important  w^hether  land  w^re  leased  by  the  state-officers— 
usually  the  censors  — or  granted  'in  possession,'  i.e.  as  revocable 
grants  for  an  indefinite  period,  or  '  assigned '  as  absolute  property. 

The  laws  of  Licinius  and  Sextius  limited  possessiones ;  i.e.  the  adding 
of  field  to  field,  to  be  remunerative  to  the  forecloser  of  mortgages  and 
loans,  must  be  of  bookland  or  ager  asstgnatus,  and  not  of  folkland, 
of  which  consisted  by  far  the  greater  portion  of  the  Roman  territory, 
and  which  should  have  been  made  a  standing  treasury  for  the  nation. 

It  is,  we  see,  the  old  panacea.  The  enforcement  of  the  Sextian 
limit  relieved  for  a  time,  but  not  permanently.  No  regular  machinery 
for  the  management  of  the  ager publicus  was  provided;  accumulation 
went  on  unchecked,  for  the  magistrates  did  not  enforce  the  laws, 
the  senate  did  not  insist  authoritatively,  the  public  did  not  agitate 
persistently,  and  their  spokesmen  apostatised.  Possessio  still  became 
ownership  by  prescription,  and  laws  contemned  were  worse  than 
evils  unforbidden. 

But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  an  artificial  reconstruction  of 
the  older  system  would  have  availed,  even  if  sincere  and  well  carried 
out.  At  the  time  and  for  a  time  peasant-proprietorship,  reinforced 
by  military  colonisation  and  well  defined  schemes  of  indirect  taxation, 
might  have  subsisted  by  the  side  of  a  growing  and  grasping  capitalism. 
But  a  renewal  of  the  old  troubles,  tributum  and  military  service,  would 
have  resulted  in  the  old  distress.  That  the  landwehr  should  serve 
in  offensive  campaigns  at  a  distance  and  still  pay  a  property-tax  at 
home,  is  enough  to  prove  that  the  yeomanry  could  not  have  made 
their  footing  good  as  a  class  against  capitalistic  system.  It  was  the 
policy  of  a  city-state  pursued  by  a  state  which  was  no  longer  a  city  ; 
the  policy  of  a  commercial  state  enforced  by  a  state  which  should 
have  found  its  strength  in  agriculture.  It  could  not  have  survived 
the  Hannibalic  war,  scarcely  the  war  with  Pyrrhus.  The  vis  medi- 
catrix  naturae  does  not  extend  to  maintaining  classes  which  bear 
the  burden  of  war  and  fighting  their  battles  against  the  competition  of 
enterprising  non-combatants.  The  widow  is  ousted  from  her  possessio 
by  fraud  or  force,  or  she  sells ;  or  the  bread-winner,  returning  laden 
with  debt,  finds  himself  unable,  war-worn  and  wounded  as  he  is,  to 
make  headway  against  his  difficulties,  and  sells  or  dies,  leaving  his 


y 


Kl 


i  4 


1 


orphans,  if  they  be  not  enslaved,  at  best  paupers.  The  homestead  is 
in  any  case  given  up,  and  the  survivors,  if  free,  are  to  be  found  swell- 
ing the  capite  censi  of  the  capital.  Rome  swallowed  up  the  broken 
fragments  of  what  once  looked  like  successful  country-life. 

The  political  result  of  the  Sextian  bills  was  therefore  more  en- 
during than  the  economic;    and  the  consolidation  of  the  ranks  of 
oflaciahsm  made  further  land-agitation  for  the  time  useless.     The  new 
leaders  of  the  populares  accordingly  took  up  the  heroic  remedy  of 
Manlius,  and  essayed  to  enforce   usury-laws.     The  evils  of  usury 
though  decidedly  overrated  in  antiquity,  are  exceedingly  grave  in  a 
non-industrial  state ;   but  legislation  is  to  be  deprecated  for  the  very 
strong  reason  that  if  money  must  be  found  it  will  be  borrowed   and 
the  greater  the  risk  to  the  lender  the  greater  the  versura  he  hopes  to 
make,  i.e.  usury-laws  raise  the  price  of  loans,  and  so  aggravate  the 
ills  they  are  intended  to  palliate.     This  did  not  occur  to  the  Romans 
with  whom  at  first  capital  was  scarce  and  interest  high ;  and  accord- 
ingly the  decemviral  legislation  forbade  any  higher  rate  than  U7iciarum 
fenus,  lo  /^  per  annum.     When,  moreover,  debt  became  the  grievance 
of  the  popular  party,  this  measure  became  far  too  moderate,  and 
usury  was  first  gready  reduced  and  then  entirely  forbidden  by  the 
tribumcian  law  of  Genucius  (341  B.C.).     The  result  was,  of  course 
that  hinted  at  above.     The  debtor,  provided  he  was  relieved  tempo- 
rarily by  a  little  ready  money,  was  willing,  with  the  sanguine  tempera- 
ment which  characterises  his  class,  to  promise  anything.    The  interest 
was   charged   as  principal,  with  the  mortgagee's  full  consent,  and 
distress  continued. 

The  lex  Paelelta,  which  dealt  with  such  evasions -the  so-called 
nexum  frauds— soon  became  a  dead  letter.  Debts  were  accredited 
to  fictitious  socii  against  whom  common  law  did  not  avail,  and  the 
sums  were  recoverable  in  the  equity  court  of  the  praetor  peregrinus. 
Other  evasions  soon  followed;  the  agitation  was  checkmated,  and 
like  the  land-laws,  contemptu  abolitae,  usury  laws  waxed  obsolete. 
The  evil  was  allowed  to  draw  to  a  head  and  destroyed  the  industrial* 
classes  in  the  interests  of  a  moneyed  aristocracy.  The  yeomanry 
and  in  general  the  lower  middle  classes  of  Rome,  died  out.  A  few 
rismg  above  their  order  went  to  swell  the  ranks  of  the  optimates.  The 
rest  flocked  to  Rome  to  form  the  clientele  of  rich  men,  to  clamour 
for  state  aid,  to  hire  out  as  bravoes,  and  ultimately  to  rule  the  streets, 
and  hasten  despotism  by  annihilating  government  and  society.  We 
have  the  proletariat  of  Caesarean  Rome  in  the  germ,  the  *  permanent 
possibility  of  revolution' which  demoralised  the  metropolis;  and  one 
of  the  main  causes  is  the  canker  of  debt  which  ate  out  the  heart  of 
the  Roman  farmer-class. 

Not  that^  the  party-cry  ceased,  but  it  was  ineffectual.  It  took  the 
*  socialistic '  form  of  novae  tabulae,  and  it  came  in  too  sophisticated  an 
age  for  a  Solonian  (TucraxS^la.  In  90  b.c.  the  praetor  Asellio  was  mas- 
sacred by  indignant  creditors  when  he  endeavoured  to  enforce  obso- 
lescent usury  laws ;  Lucullus  had  to  limit  compound  indebtedness  to 
one  alterum  tan  turn  of  the  principal.     Cato's  /ur(7n  dupli  condemnari 


26 

faeneratorem  quadrupli  was  impossible  of  accomplishment.  Caesar 
had  in  49,  after  the  troubled  times  of  misgovernment  and  non-govern- 
ment, to  allow  of  and  to  enforce  a  partial  xp^^^  dnoKOTrf},  and  yet  this 
could  not  save  the  state  from  the  terrible  financial  crisis  of  a.d.  33, 
which  was  only  alleviated  by  the  public  spirit  of  Tiberius. 

What  a  catchword  was  afforded  by  the  usury  laws  to  a  Sulpicius,  a 
Catiline,  a  Milo,  or  a  Dolabella,  is  obvious.  The  evil  at  bottom  was 
that  of  unequal  taxation,  not  deliberate  as  in  France  before  '89,  but 
ill-judged;  imposed  perhaps  in  all  good  faith  by  men  who  did  not 
understand  that  the  essence  of  equality  in  taxation  is  equality  of  sacri- 
fice. It  created  debt  and  distress,  crushed  the  middle-classes,  and 
recruited  the  mob  of  Rome,  while  the  remedy  offered  gave  the  prole- 
tariat a  rallying  point,  and  helped  on  that  anarchy  which  Rome's 
'  mixed  government,'  so  bepraised  by  Polybius,  originated.  The  hege- 
mony of  Roman  power  and  of  Greek  culture,  which  was  that  historian's 
ideal,  was  not  to  be  furthered  either  by  that  same  *  mixed  govern- 
ment' or  by  its  economic  policy,  whether  initiatory  or  remedial. 
The  chapter  of  indebtedness  is  a  bad  one  and  the  account  may  be 
closed.  It  was  one,  but  only  one,  important  factor  in  Roman  decadence. 

And  yet  in  after  times  the  period  which  directly  followed  the 
Paetelian  law^  was  looked  upon  as  the  beginning  of  Rome's  real 
greatness.  AW/i  desierunt,  and  for  the  moment  the  tribune  was  silent 
and  the  popular  cause  dormant.  The  magistrate  had  become  con- 
scious neither  of  his  need  of  emancipation,  nor  of  its  glorious  possi- 
bilities, and  the  optimates  were  a  new  oligarchy,  as  yet  not  disunited 
by  the  mutual  repulsion  of  partial  interests,  or  by  the  clashing  of  in- 
dividual self-seekings.  Senatorian  rule  had  become  a  reality.  It  was 
the  quiet  before  the  storm. 

For  evil  was  as  yet  only  in  the  germ,  and  an  artificial  or  temporary 
harmony  appeared  in  Rome.  The  '  periodic  volcano  of  agitation ' 
was  seething  indeed,  but  not  at  fever-heat.  As  yet  the  disintegration 
of  government  was  arrested,  and  the  demoralisation  of  society  checked. 
Moribus  antiquis  stai  res  Romana  virisque^  and  this  at  a  time  when 
remedial  legislation  for  admitted  evils  was  at  an  absolute  discount, 
and  the  virus  was  looked  on  as  ineradicable. 

Internal  history  does  not  explain  the  unruffled  calm ;  on  the  eve 
of  the  democratic  charter,  the  Hortensian  law,  Rome  was  at  peace 
with  herself.  The  cause  is  to  be  looked  for  in  external  politics; 
Rome  is  staking  her  very  life  in  the  Samnite  wars,  and  patriotism,  if 
a  state  be  not  wholly  dead,  is  a  saving  salt  to  arrest  decay,  if  not  to 
heal  internal  wounds.  Rome,  like  Austria,  Prussia,  Spain,  in  1808, 
postpones  old  quarrels  to  national  calls  for  union,  and  the  Samnite 
war,  sullied  as  it  is  by  the  national  dishonour  at  Caudium,  vitalises 
Roman  government  by  the  intense  need  for  self-assertion.  Only  a 
disheartened  race  is  unequal  to  the  demand  for  courage,  and  Rome 
never  lost  heart.  Economics  were  put  aside  for  politics,  i.e.  for  his- 
tory in  the  present ;  and  in  the  internal  records  of  Rome  there  is  little 
matter  of  note  save  the  mad  Claudian  schemes  of  pseudo-democracy, 
and  the  wise  conservatism  of  Q.  Fabius. 


I 


■i 


27 

Thirty-seven  years  of  war  left  Rome  victorious,  and  then  followed 
fresh  agitation  but  in  a  political  direction  rather  than  economical. 
1  he  plebeian  charter  was  renewed  if  not  extended  in  287.  The  con- 
quest consuinmated  at  Sentinum  gave  land  in  plenty  for  state-grants. 
The  law  of  debt  had  been  abrogated  by  disuse  in  the  hard  times  and 
amid  the  financial  difficulties  of  prolonged  war,  and  the  dearth  of 
political  ideas  prevented  any  new  attempt  at  a  solution  of  the  eco- 
nomic problem.  The  payment  of  the  soldiers  which,  though  it  dated 
from  very  early  times  (406  b.c.)  was  only  gradually  adopted  in  shorter 
campaigns,  and  the  beginning  of  indirect  taxation  relieved  the  pres- 
sure Land-grants  postponed  its  recurrence.  The  elTective  portion 
oix^t  lex  Paeklia  partially  silenced  agitation,  and  the  acquiescence 
of  the  farmers  in  their  exploitation,  which  found  some  vindication  in 
a  continued  home-war  with  prospects  often  worse  than  dubious, 
closed  for  the  time  the  old  economic  question.  How  would  it  again 
emerge  r  ° 

The  w-ar  with  Pyrrhus  still  kept  the  attention  of  all  parties  fixed  on 
external  history,  rather  than  on  internal  politics,  and  the  stren<rth  and 
value  of  senatorian  government  could  still  be  scarcely  over-estimated, 
i  be  aims,  often  inordinate  and  alwavs  all  but  inarticulate,  of  the 
/q»^/<7w  only  expressed  themselves  in  old  formulae  now  utterly  voided 
ot  meaning.  Yet  for  a  moment  the  success  of  the  government 
seemed  scarcely  an  adequate  guarantee  for  its  permanency.  The 
wars  with  Carthage  saved  the  senate  for  a  long  period,  and  sealed 
the  doom  of  senatorian  government.  With  the  recognition  of  Rome 
as  one  of  the  great  powers,  and  with  her  collision  with  Carthage  a  new 
economic  era  begins.  ' 

The  farmer  had  been  ousted,  and  in  the  end  not  utterly  in  opposi- 
tion to  his  own  will.     The  horrors  of  creditor-law  had  been  mitigated 
in  the  one  respect  of  personal  enslavement,  and  both  land  question 
and  capital-question  had  apparently  disappeared.     So  too  X\^^ comilia 
and  the  consuls  were  in  this  period  successfully,  and  all  but  by  their 
own  consent  shelved,  and  constitutional  questions  were  apparently 
also  buried.     T  o  what  end  then  this  narrative  ?     Because  the  old 
questions  revive  transformed,  as  scotched,  not  killed.     The  wars  with 
C  arthage  show  Roine  in  her  grandeur  ;  and  at  the  same  time  display 
the  tendencies  which  result  in  her  decadence.     Politically  and  econo- 
mically  Carthage  gave  to  Rome  '  the  shirt  of  Nessus"  in  the  problem 
of  empire,  for  a  state  whose  '  idea '  was  civic,  and  in  the  problem  of 
capitalistic  competition  for  a  people  whose  ideal  was  domestic,  i.e.  in 
the  difficulty  of  combining  extension  with  fulness,  and  of  making  the 
o  d  respubhca  and  familia  still  intelligible  when  the  one  meant  the 
Mediterranean    civilisation,    and   the   other   the   plantation    system. 
Rome  s  mismanagement  in  the  provinces  was  often  inherited.     Her 
lalse  pohcy  which  construed /ra^^^a  as/rWa,  and  which,  with  other 
elements  of  degeneracy,  found  place  in  C.  Gracchus'  plan  of  campaign, 
was  bequeathed  by  Hiero  and  by  Carthaginian  viceroys.     But  the  evil 

*  Mommsen. 


28 

Kar  fioxijv  which  we  find  adopted  by  Rome  from  Punic  economy  is 
capitalistic  slavery.  The  disease  which  was  to  destroy  Carthage  should 
destroy  Rome. 

An  account  of  the  Punic  Wars  and  their  political  results  is  here  un- 
necessary. An  account  of  the  wars  m  Greece  is  also  needless.  Rome 
found  herself  imperial  in  the  face  of  '  the  fundamental  defect  of  anti- 
quity— that  it  never  fully  advanced  from  the  civic  form  of  constitution ' 
to  a  higher  conception  of  the  nature  of  a  state  ;  and  Rome  found 
herself  capitalistic  and  bourgeois;  in  antagonism  to  another  funda- 
mental principle  of  antiquity  that  the  TroXty  and  the  oiKia  were  the 
"true  units,  and  not  each  and  any  Tilius  or  Seius. 

The  effect  of  this  change  was  that  aggregation  took  the  place  of 
organisation  politically,  and  the  constitutional  system  broke  down ;  the 
first  condition  of  successful  action  on  the  part  of  a  magistrate  was 
tacit  rebellion — a  Spinther  hesitated  and  did  nothing,  a  Gabinius 
ignored  all  authority,  and  became  arbiter  of  the  fate  of  a  nation.  And 
individualism  or  moral  atomism  superseded  association  economically. 
The  self-will  and  self-seeking  of  a  citizen  came  to  constitute  his 
effectiveness.  The  homestead  as  a  unit  disappeared,  and  with  it  the 
*  economy '  and  the  morality  of  the  older  familia,  its  patriarchal  sim- 
plicity and  its  patria  potestas.  The  place  thus  left  void  was  filled  by 
the  plantation,  with  the  morality  and  economy  of  slaves  and  slave- 
masters,  with  the  division  of  labour  to  a  point  at  which  the  individual 
ceased  to  be  more  than  a  wheel  in  a  machine,  and  with  the  govern- 
ment of  the  ergastuluvi. 

The  slavery  of  earlier  times  was  at  least  excusable  if  not  justifiable, 
for  domestic  slavery  was  probably  a  moral  advance,  a  substitution  of 
a  milder  doom  for  the  savage  wholesale  butchery  of  prisoners  which 
had  theretofore  obtained.  The  merciful  dispensation  of  slavery,  how- 
ever, began  to  lose  its  favourable  aspect  with  the  rise  of  bondage  for 
debt,  a  corrupt  development  which  became  the  grievance  of  a  success- 
ful agitation.  The  defect  had  disappeared  before  the  period  of  the 
great  wars,  and  at  the  commencement  of  the  magnificent  struggle  in 
which  the  prestige  of  the  senatorian  rule  secured  it  an  unconstitutional 
probuleutic  power  and  a  strong  potentia  with  the  executive,  only  do- 
mestic slavery  existed  in  the  Roman  state.  Capitalism  had  only  just 
won  the  upper  hand  on  the  land  question,  and  liad  been  nominally 
defeated  on  the  bankruptcy  bills,  and  the  commercial  revolution  had 
only  begun.  At  the  close  of  the  great  wars  plutocracy  was  rampant, 
and  a  web  of  plantations  overspread  the  whole  Roman  system. 

And  the  reason  is  obvious.  Carthage  was  as  unfitted  for  empire 
as  Venice  or  Amsterdam,  and  ruled  in  the  interest  of  a  mercantile 
cabal.  Government  was  in  the  hands  of  and  for  the  advantage  of 
the  slave-holders  in  a  joint-stock  company ;  and  hence,  wherever  the 
sovereignty  or  protectorate  of  Carthage  extended,  capitalistic  pro- 
duction by  slave-gangs  and  the  whole  machinery  of  the  later  Roman 
economy  were  in  full  vogue.  Rome,  as  Carthage  shrunk  into  her 
inmost  fastnesses,  was  forced  to  take  up  the  reins  of  government, 
and  she  had  no  organisation  ready.     She  developed  one,  but  it  was 


1 


>-f 


29 

necessarily  imperfect,  and  she  could  not  give  the  essential  of  new  life 
a  free    population.     Her   victories,    substantial   or   petty,   gave   her 
pnsoners  m  plenty,  and  she  utilised  them  to  carry  out  the  Cartha- 
gmian  scheme.     She  could  not  maintain  a  peasantry  in  Italy  much 
less  m   Sicily  and  provinces  more  remote.     And  the  result 'was  a 
slavery  which  was  worse  than  death  to  the  slave,  and  which  broucrht 
a  nemesis  with  it.     From  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Zama,  transmarine 
corn,  produced  by  slave-labour  and  at  small  cost  except  in  human 
lite,  was  extensively  imported  by  the  Roman  government.     It  was  in 
many  cases  grown  by  Roman  monopolists,  not  under  provincial  re- 
strictions;   and  the  cost  of  transportation  was  cheaper   than  from 
middle  Italy.     The  development  of  the  Padane  valley  as  the  granary 
ot  Rome   was   for  ever   rendered   impracticable.     The   government 
sold  to  the  proletariat  at  under  cost  price,  or  left  the  corn,  never  paid 
,Dut  received  as  a  tithe  in  kind,  to  the  lessees  of  the  tithe,  who 
could  still  undersell  even  the  capitalistic  home-grower.     The  market 
was  at  the  same  time  lessened,  for  the  armies  were  supplied  by  the 
corn-payments  of  subjects,  and  so  was  the  metropolis.     Small  farm- 
ing, on  possessiones  too  small  for  pasturage,  was  not  to  be  dreamed 
ot.  ^  l|rom   Sicily,  '  the  chosen  land  of  the  plantation  svstem,'   the 
capitalistic   slave-farming    invaded   Italy.     Latifundia   with   summer 
and  winter  pastures   became   the   economic   order   in   Italy       Italy 
was   depopulated,  and  a  competitive  sauve  qui  pent  ruled  with   no 
hope  for  the  vanquished;    neque  ullus  procedenits  finis  esL  nisi  cum 
in  alterum  diviiem  incident. 

The  rise  too  of  that  competitive  struggle,  which  is  always  the 
reducho  ad  ahsurdum  of  a  bourgeois  political  economy,  was  assisted 
by  further  considerations.  The  blood-tax  of  prolonged  war  was 
only  paid  by  the  more  than  decimation  of  the  staple  recruiting  classes, 
and  the  burden  now  fell  also  on  the  Italian  *  allies.'  The  farmer  in 
social  territory— or  in  Roman  where  he  still  existed— was  required 
for  foreign  service,  and  competition,  always  futile,  was  made  doubly 
hopeless  by  a  compulsory  absenteeism.  His  acres  were  swallowed 
up  by  capitalism,  and  the  agrestia  per  longinquos  saltus  et  ferocia 
serviha  which  roused  the  Roman  spirit  in  Ti.  Gracchus,  and  were 
the  standing  problem  of  the  disorganised  Republic  and  of  the  Western 
empire,  succeeded. 

And  actual  legislation  did  its  work  also.  Flaminius,  a  true  dema- 
gogue, introduced  or  instigated,  during  the  course  of  the  Second 
runic  War,  the  law  known  as  the  Claudian,  prohibiting  senators 
from  commerce  or  trade  of  any  kind'^  and  forbidding  a  senator  to 
undertake  state  contracts^  {redemptiones).  The  senator  who  was 
wealthy  became,  accordingly,  a  capitalistic  grazier,  with  sheep-farms 
as  extensive  as  those  of  Southern  Australia  in  a  country  so  straitened 
as  Ita  y.  1  he  ;  knight,'  i.  e.  the  eques  or  non-senatorian  capitalist, 
harried  the  provinces,  as  tax-gatherer,  banker,  or  usurer,  and  where 
he  obtained  magisterial  sanction  or  connivance,  wrung  money  from 
'  Tac.  Ann.  iv.  27.  .  .  lj^  ^^j  ^^ 

^  Dio.  Iv.  10. 


30 

the  unfortunate  subjects.  The  senator  revelled  in  the  profits  of 
his  latifundia,  and  scarcely  felt  the  evil  of  depopulation  and  of  a 
slave-system  which  was  the  growing  danger  of  the  state.  But  Pliny 
was  right  when,  reading  the  riddle  which  the  senate  had  failed  to 
answer,  and  interpreting  the  antecedents  in  the  full  light  of  the  con- 
sequents, he  declared  that  latifundia  perdidere  Jtaliam,  They  were, 
however,  but  one  cause  in  the  destruction,  and  only  found  full  scope 
under  the  empire  when  the  metayer-tenancy  of  the  colonatus  was 
applied  in  partial  solution  of  the  problem.  Rome  had  in  republican 
days  no  semi-emancipation  of  shepherds  TiXi^fossores  to  offer,  for  the 
rural  slaves  were  not  sufficiently  denationalised  to  make  such  an 
alleviation  of  their  lot  safe.  She  emancipated  citv-slaves,  however, 
and  increased  the  proletariat  by  the  accession  of  liberti,  of  an  anti- 
Roman  culture,  to  their  ranks.  She  imposed  a  tax  on  emancipations 
because  they  were  not  safe,  but  she  found  them  necessary,  and  she 
accordingly  added  to  the  declassis  descendants  of  the  old  yeomanry, 
and  to  the  sophisticated  petty  tradesmen,  and  the  disaffected  artisans 
of  the  city,  freedmen  without  patriotism  for  Rome,  and  without 
interest  in  the  government.  The  freedmen  reinforced  the  already 
growing  rabble,  and  joined  in  the  empty  party-cries  of  their  patrons 
or  of  the  tribunes.  They  forced  on  the  development  of  that  spirit 
which  demanded  '  bread  and  the  games '  as  the  price  of  order,  and 
which  transformed  Vielkinderei  into  pauperism.  The  proletariat  be- 
came an  element  of  disturbance  which  defied  police  and  was  only  to 
be  quieted  by  arms.  The  demand  for  a  military  tyranny  was  be- 
coming effective,  for  in  Rome  as  in  the  provinces  the  needs  of  the 
time  '  necessitated  the  appointment  of  governors  whose  position  was 
absolutely  incompatible  .  .  .  with  the  Roman  constitution  ^'  A  virtual 
dictatorship  was  perforce  conceded  to  the  great  general  of  the  day, 
and  not  all  proconsuls  would  refrain,  like  Scipio  Aemilianus,  from 
turning  their  arms  against  the  government  itself.  The  senate  was 
fortunate  in  being  saved,  once  and  again,  by  this  the  greater  of  the 
Scipiones,  and  by  Sulla ;  but  the  autocracy  of  Aemilianus,  with  his 
taceani  quihus  Italia  noverca,  and  his  sound  judgment  of  Ti.  Gracchus, 
was  the  last  opportunity  for  the  arrest  of 'the  decline  before  it 
became  downfall. 

But  the  riches  of  the  eqm'fes,  just  after  an  exhausting  war,  require 
some  explanation,  and  it  would  seem  to  be  this.  The  enormous 
gold  agio  of  the  Hannibalic  wars  ^  which  was  a  species  of  national 
bankruptcy,  was  not  also  repudiation,  and  the  redempHones  of  enor- 
mous nominal  sums  undertaken  by  those  who  had  money  were 
liquidated  in  full  at  the  close  of  the  war.  The  monopolists  of  the 
gold-supply  doubled,  trebled  and  multiplied  beyond  belief  their  whole 
fortunes,  in  the  unprecedented  tightness  of  the  monev-market.  Those 
fortunes  they  invested,  when  the  war  was  over,  in  'the  advancing  of 
taxes  to  the  state.  They  farmed  the  taxes  and  turned  over  their 
inoney  again  and  again,  and  not  always  too  honestly.     And  they 

V  Mommsen,  iii.  cap.  1 1,  vol.  II.  p.  337.  >  PUny,  H.  N.  xxxiii.  13. 


^ 


< 


J 


31 

became  a  rival  order  to  the  senate  and,  though  always  'ballasting 
the  restlessness  of  discontent  with  the   salutary  inertia  of  .  .  .  self- 
interest,'  their  ideal  was  a  police  under  the  influence  of  a  moneyed 
aristocracy,   rather    than   a   strong    oligarchy.     When   C.  Gracchus 
bicipitem  civitatem  fecit^ ,  and  boasted  that  he  had  brought  in  an  apple 
of  discord  ^  he  was  only  making  explicit  an  implicit  rivalry  which 
must  have  resulted  in  disunion  and  struggle.     By  the  judiciary  laws 
the  ordo  equester  sat  in  judgment  on  those  who  were  the  only  check 
on  the  extreme  operation  of  the  joint-stock  company  principle  of 
imperial  administration.     C.  Gracchus  wittingly  hastened  the  end,  as 
by  his  lex  /rume?ilarm  he  hastened  the  evolution   of  the  rioters  of 
the  reign  of  terror,  as  by  his  military  law  he  dissolved  the  only  natural 
principle  which  could  maintain  the  citizen-army  united,  and  as  by  his 
proposed   Italian    franchise    he   would   have    swamped    the    comilia 
beyond  salvation.     That  he  was  *  a  political  incendiary  with  a  con- 
suming passion   for   vengeance^'   is   probably   true,    for   all    these 
measures  traversed  the  family-policy  of  agrarian  reform.     That  '  he 
wished  ...  to  introduce  ...  a  Tyrannis,  that  is  ...  a  monarchy  .  .  . 
of  the  Napoleonic  absolute  type— in  the  form  of ...  an  unlimited 
tribuneship  for  life '  is  almost  certainly  false,  for  he  must  have  seen 
that  any  proconsul  could  have  crushed  him  in  a  week,  or  at  most 
a  month.      C.  Gracchus  is  only  important  to  us  as  renderino-  the 
political  government  disunited,  and  exposing  its  weakness,  when''  only 
concentration  and  apparent  strength  could  save  it ;  as  showing,  or  at 
least  attempting  to  show,  the  impotence  of  democracy '  in  a  Common- 
wealth which  had  outgrown  collective  assemblies  and  had  no  know- 
ledge of  parliamentary  government ' ;  as  proving  the  impossibility  in 
a  '  popular '  magistrate  of  carrying  the  state  by  a  lour  de  force ;  in 
opening  a  way  for  economic  evils  to  have  free  course,  by  pauperising 
the  proletariat   and  withal   exhausting  the    treasury,  and   paying  a 
premium  to  idleness ;  in  fine,  by  making  explicit  each  and  all  of  "the 
evils,  economic  and  political,  which  were  at  bottom  responsible  for 
the  state's  decadence.     C.  Gracchus,  according  to  this  reading  of  his 
character,  is  at  first  a  socialist;    at  last  a  nihilist.     He  may  have 
honestly  believed  that  the  only  solution  of  the  problem  of  wealth  and 
want  was  a  chaos  which  should  in  the  fulness  of  time  give  way  to 
a  new  cosmos.     But  he  was  the  Bakunin  of  Rome. 

The  digression  is  not  unimportant,  for  C.  Gracchus  was,  in  a  sort, 
the  projection  of  all  the  fatal  tendencies  of  the  decline,  and  their 
embodiment  in  a  personal  influence.  The  proletariat  was  ready  to 
hand,  and  he  made  that  underselling  of  the  Italian  farmer  customary 
which  had  been  exceptional.  He  confirmed  the  demoralisation  of  the 
city  and  the  wasting  of  Italy.  The  senate  was  on  the  verge  of  de- 
struction, and  he  lent  it  a  hand  for  the  leap  into  the  abyss.  The 
army  was  declining  and  he  destroyed  it,  leaving  the  stage  clear  for 
the  work  of  Marius.     Discontent,  and  that   '  cheap  courage  which 

*  Varro.  «  Cic.  Leg.  iii.  9.  20. 

*  V.  Mommsen,  iv.  cap.  3,  vol.  III.  pp.  119-120. 


32 

risks  the  goods  of  others'  were  rife,  and  he  gave  them  voice.     Ke 
presided  over  the  baphometic  baptism  of  the  coming  Terror. 

In  his  brother  we  have  a  less  original  reformer,  and  a  less  able 
man.  Ti.  Gracchus  exposed  the  evil  of  the  plantation  system,  but  the 
remedy  he  proposed  was  one  which  had  been  rejected  as  inadequate. 
He  was  no  nihilist,  but  he  tried  to  revive  the  laid  ghost  of  the  con- 
stitution in  an  appeal  to  \\\e  plebs,  and  the  obsolete  agrarianism  of  the 
Licinian  rogations  by  a  family-commission  for  a  -y^y  avahaa-yio^.  In  his 
first  movement  he  was  successful,  for  the  senate,  if  materially  right, 
was  formally  wrong ;  but  he  spoilt  the  whole  effect  of  his  programme 
by  the  deposition  of  Octavius.  He  gave  a  precedent  which  justified 
Gabinius  in  working  on  the  faintheartedness  of  the  tribune  Trebellius, 
and  which  carried  the  Gabinian  law.  He  justified,  again,  the  Vatinian 
plebiscite,   and  emancipated  Pompeius,  and  gave  Caesar  Gaul,     ws 

dnoKoiTO  Ka\  dXKos  om  roiavra  y€  p€^oi. 

In  his  second  movement  he  failed,  except  in  giving  temporary  relief 
to  the  distressed,  and  in  raising  for  a  time  the  census.  Polybius  had 
said  that  a  distribution  of  land,  such  as  that  carried  into  effect  by 
Agis  III  of  Sparta,  and  by  Ti.  Gracchus,  was  the  last  evil  of  ochlo- 
cracy ;  but  he  had  not  seen  the  Gracchi,  and  he  even  underestimated 
the  effect.  The  revival  of  the  Licinian  bill  against  all  prescription,  in 
an  age  when  what  was  wealth  in  367  was  esteemed  poverty,  and  when 
peasant-properties  had  utterly  failed,  was  not  only  absurd  but  iniquit- 
ous. The  senators  had  been  forced  by  the  kx  Claudia  to  become 
landowners  in  their  own  despite,  and  their  vested  interests  should  have 
been  valid.  It  was  therefore  a  flagrant  invasion  of  rights  which  was 
moreover  utterly  ineffectual,  and  can  only  be  treated  as  a  dangerous 
panacea  offered  by  a  charlatan. 

This  was  not  the  means  to  use  in  the  solution  of  the  social  problem. 
The  evil  lay  deeper  in  that  proletariat  which  had  been  created  by  the 
wars,  taxation  and  usury  of  early  days,  and  had  been  stereotyped  by 
the  legacy  of  Carthage — an  empire  ruined  by  stock-broking,  a  stock- 
broking  system  cursed  with  empire.  The  proletariat  had  been  modi- 
fied by  the  constant  wars  and  the  constant  use  of  the  vindicta.  It 
had  been  demoralised  by  prices  permanently  under  cost  of  production. 
It  had  been  brutalised  by  the  gladiatorial  shows  which  made  the  lot  of 
the  s\d.vQ-/amilia  harder.  And  with  this  monster  Ti.  Gracchus  tried 
the  spell  which  had  been  proved  powerless  ages  before.  The  first 
Gracchan  reform  bill  was  directly  occasioned  by  the  first  Sicilian  slave- 
war,  and  to  this  perhaps  is  owing  the  slight  glimmer  of  understanding 
which  appears  in  the  extension  of  possessiones  by  a  sort  of  Jus  liberorum. 
But  the  slave-system  is  not  hinted  at,  much  less  controlled  ;  and  in 
that  and  in  the  city  mob,  or  in  their  common  causes  lay  the  evil. 

Ti.  Gracchus  was  the  socialist  of  the  revolution,  as  his  brother  was 
the  nihilist.  Though  his  socialism  was  not  explicit,  it  appears  in  the 
germ.  He  caused  rich  and  poor  to  confront  one  another  definitely  as 
in  hostile  camps.  He  showed  the  impotence  of  the  individual  who 
had  no  property  '  to  interpret  himself  to  himself  He  renewed  the 
democratic  pretensions  of  the  lower  orders,  and  he  directly  caused  a 


) 


\ 


i 


33 

shaking  or  perplexing  of  public  opinion  in  its  feeling  of  right.     And 
all  this  without  a  positive  propaganda. 

Gains  followed  and  denied  the  necessity  of  any  such  propa^randa 
burnmg  simply  for  blood-letting  to  clear  the  wav  for  the  evolution  of 
the  state  ab  initio.     The  decline  was  accomplished,  ih^facilis  descensus 
•was  changmg  mto  praeceps  ruina,  when  the  leaders  of  the  Roman  state 
were  such  apostles  of  anarchy. 

We  have  thus  far  looked  on  the  proletariat  as  the  outcome  of  the 
false  economy  of  Rome.     Let  us  now  turn  to  the  other  side  of  the 
medal,  and  review  the  ordo  equeskr  and  their  chattels  in  the  same  li^rht 
The  temporary  emergencies  of  the  Hannibalic  war  had  created  a  cTass 
such  as  was  evolved  under  the  empire  by  the  permanent  gold-shrink- 
age, and  with  like  tendencies  and  ambitions,  those  of  a  Crassus  to 
wit,  or  a  Didius,     But  under  the  empire  the  question  of  depopulation 
became  important,  not  only  in  reference  to  the  army  and  to  morality, 
but  m  respect  to  national  existence ;  and  the  appreciation  of  human 
lite  prevented  the  horrors  of  slavery  reaching  to  their   present   ex- 
tent     Slaves  they  must  have,  for  the  Roman  people  would  not  work 
tor  hire— they  were  the  '  mean  whites  '  of  Virginian  civili>ation  almost 
exactly,  and  bread  was  dear,  flesh  and  blood  cheap.     The  whip  the 
€rgastulum,  and  the  cross  became  familiar.     The  slaves  in  desperation 
rose  m  Sicily  in  134  b,  c,  and  again  in  104.     The  gladiator-slaves 
under  Spartacus  ravaged  Italy,  all  but  unchecked,  and  Crassus  stepped 
trom  the  praetor's  court  to  the  praetorium  to  quell  revolution.     And 
this  in  spite  of  daily  emancipations  restrained,  perhaps  wisely,  by  tax, 
and  in  spite  of— perhaps  in  consequence  of— daily  executions.     Italy 
was  ripe  for  change,  wherever  the  slave  could  hope  for  liberty,  and 
the  free-man  for  quiet.     The  supply  of  the  slave-market  was  scarcely 
kept  up  by  the  slave-hunts— wars  the  triumphators  styled  them -of 
Rome  in  the  East,     Every  new  slave  brought  with  him  an  earnest 
hatred  to  Rome  and  to  the  orders  senatorius  et  equester,  the  incarna- 
tion of  the  hateful  system.     The  demand  grew  greater  and  greater; 
the  lot  of  the  chattel  harder  and  harder.     Slavery  alone  would  have 
wrecked  Rome,  had  the  slave-owners  been  a  nobler  race.     But  they 
were  essentially  immoral.     Their  gains  were  sterile-commercial  at 
best  never  industrial.     They  did  not  even  fulfil  the  mission  of  modern 
stock-exchange  speculators,  and  equate  supply  and  demand  present 
and  iuture ;  for  supply  was  furnished  without  price,  and  demand  was 
glutted  by  corn  and  oil,  and  shows.     They  understood  finance  but 
they  practised  it  solely  for  private  ends.     They  turned  money  over  the 
^istophorus  question,   they  established    their  bimetallic   contracts  on 
a  sound  footing,  they  farmed  taxes,  and  a  Verres  was  their  patron  and 
intimate  a  Rufus  their  scapegoat.     They  would  starve  out  the  corpo- 
ration of  an  indebted  township,  and  bring  it  to  terms.     They  would 
take  advantage  of  Roman  privilege  in  their  dealings  with  subject-races, 
and  would  expect  Roman  privilege  to  be  permanent     They  drew 
their  wealth  from  the  provinces  or  the  country,  and  they  brought  it  all 
to  Rome.      They  centralised  the  commerce  of  the  empire  in  the  hall 
ot  their  stock-exchange,  and  they  decentralised  the  government  of  the 


34 

empire  in  order  to  scramble  for  the  spoils.  They  had  only  self- 
inierest  at  heart,  and  self-interest  is  proverbially  shortsighted.  The 
slaves  turned  against  the  old  orders  in  the  century  of  civil  war,  and 
were  the  instruments  of  the  proscription,  and  though  the  orders  con- 
tinued, they  were  decimated,  their  goods  were  depreciated,  their 
fortunes  sapped.  Julius,  Octavian,  and  Tiberius  struck  a  blow  at  in- 
direct taxation  per  publicanos,  and  the  ordo  equester  as  well  as  the  senate 
were  plundered  freely.  If  there  was  a  justification  for  the  Roman 
revolution,  it  is  to  be  found  especially  in  this,  that  it  dealt  out  a  richly 
deserved  humiliation  and  retribution  to  a  blood-guilty  capitalism. 

We  have  referred  often  to  the  change  which  took  place  in  the  army. 
It  was  the  last  step  in  the  internal,  the  first  in  the  external  revolution. 
The  decay  of  the  yeomanry  before  the  Punic  Wars  was  at  their  close 
virtual  extinction.  The  armies  were  then  recruited  from  constantly 
lower  classes.  The  capite  censi,  once  only  summoned  for  naval  or 
inferior  service,  were  called  into  the  field.  In  the  time  of  Polybius  the 
classis  of  from  iioo  to  4000  asses  was  called  into  active  warfare,  and 
this  despite  depreciation  and  adulteration  of  the  coinage.  In  the  time 
of  C.  Gracchus  military  service  is  no  longer  a  privilege  of  the  burgess, 
but  a  burden  to  be  shared,  if  possible,  with  the  socii.  All  this  tended 
to  demoralise  the  army,  and  to  denationalise  it,  and  consequendy, 
before  Numantia,  Aemilianus  has  to  create  his  army :  Metellus  has  to 
make  an  army  in  Numidia.  The  aristocratic  cavalry  is  a  burden 
rather  than  a  service  to  the  general.  He  establishes  a  volunteer 
bodyguard  in  the  praetoriani.     The  national  army  is  doomed. 

But  the  national  army  is  the  uyiiversiis  populus  of  the  centuriate 
comitia,  and  with  the  army  must  fall  the  populus.  And  the  senate  falls 
with  the  constitution,  only  the  new  power  will  need  an  imperium 
which  is  valid,  and  so  a  new  army. 

The  slave-war  of  134  B.C.,  and  the  disasters  against  Jugurtha  and 
against  the  Cimbri  prove  that  the  decline  has  in  this  direction  run  its 
course.  Had  Viriathus  lived,  he  would  have  saved  Numantia,  and 
severed  Spain  from  the  empire,  as  Sertorius  did,  for  his  lifedme.  Had 
Jugurtha  been  a  Masinissa,  or  still  more  a  Hannibal,  Africa  would 
haVe  been  torn  from  Roman  hands,  and  Rome  herself  might  have 
fallen.  Rome  must  have  an  army  or  abdicate  her  sovereignty  in  the 
empire,  in  the  nation,  even  in  the  city.  Marius  saves  Rome  by 
inventing  the  instrument  of  her  destruction,  the  cohortial  army. 
Milites  scribere  non  more  majorum  neque  ex  classibus,  sed  ubi  cujusquc 
cupido  erat,  capite  censos  plerosque^.  The  army  is  formed  by  enlist- 
ment. A  soldier's  training  is  made  common  and  professional.  A 
soldier  serves  and  looks  to  his  leader  as  a  despodc  chief  whom  he 
must  obey ;  he  learns  to  be  orderly,  and  to  submit  to  discipline ;  he 
sees  the  intolerable  anarchy  of  Rome ;  and  he  sees  the  necessity  for 
Marius,  or  Pompeius,  or  Caesar,  their  quick  decision  and  their 
power  at  the  head  of  affairs.  INIarius  made  the  army,  and  reaped 
Metellus'  laurels  in  Numidia.      He  defeated  the  Cimbri,  and  became 

^  Sail.  ]yxz.  86. 


\ 


% 


^ 

W^ 


virtual  dictator.  He  had  no  political  genius  and  he  failed ;  but  others 
would  not  fail.  What  matters  it  whether  it  were  Lucullus,  or  a  Pom- 
peius, or  a  Caesar  that  was  successful,  a  Moreau,  a  Joubert-Dumouriez, 
or  a  Napoleon?  Much  doubdess  to  the  empire.  Nothing  to  dying  Rome! 

The  army  was  evolved.  The  Quirites  were  dissolved.  The  social 
war  swamped  them  polidcally  and,  having  no  further  military  character, 
they  could  be  of  no  further  effecdveness.  The  senate's  mismanage- 
ment was  responsible  for  the  troubles.  Individuals  reaped  the  laurels 
of  the  restoration.  The  time  was  come,  and  Sulla  seized  it ;  but  for 
his  cause,  not  for  himself.  Pompeius  was  more  selfish,  but  incom- 
petent, and  Caesar  triumphed. 

Could  Sulla  have  saved  the  republic  ?  for  if  he  could,  the  decline 
must  be  traced  through  the  Ciceronian  age.  He  could  not.  His 
frivolity  and  his  indifferentism  in  morals  cause  him  to  be  suspected  of 
lack  of  thoroughness,  but  the  suspicion  is  unjust.  He  left  the  slavery, 
the  proletariat,  the  freedmen,  the  Italians,  the  proscribed,  the 
politically  annihilated  '  ordo  equester,'  the  discontented  veterans  ;  the 
marshals  of  the  civil  war ;  but  could  he  have  removed  any  of  these 
fatal  obstacles  to  the  reaction  ? 

After  C.  Gracchus,  certainly  not.  The  new  army  was  a  necessity 
for  any  strong  government ;  and  the  old  scheme  of  land-grants,  re- 
duced to  an  absurdity  by  Ti.  Gracchus,  in  opposition  to  the  whole 
trend  of  Roman  history,  was  used  wisely  but  in  vain,  to  render  it 
quiescent.  The  marshals  were  a  necessity,  for  Sertorius  and  Lepidus, 
to  say  nothing  of  Mithradates,  survived.  The  proletariat  and  the 
slaves  were  made  the  constants  of  revolution  by  the  Gracchan  reforms. 
The  Italians  were  an  irreducible  element  in  the  state  after  89,  and 
were  also  necessary  in  Sulla's  scheme  to  abrogate,  potentially  at  least, 
the  comitia.  The  continued  existence  of  the  equites  was  necessary, 
for  they  supplied  the  organisation  of  the  empire  more  than  the 
senate  itself,  and  should  they  have  been  totally  massacred?  And 
finally  the  '  animadversio  in  post  futuros,'  though  to  be  deprecated, 
seems  to  have  been  rather  the  expression  of  the  undying  hatred  of 
his  party  to  the  promoters  of  the  civil  war,  than  anything  personal 
to  Sulla,  and  necessary  for  a  generation  at  least  in  order  to  prevent 
a  new  coup  d'etat.  On  the  consdtutional  side  he  perceived  the  mistakes 
and  the  radical  faults  of  the  state-machinery,  and  remedied  dicm  ; 
he  had  only  failed  in  two  things,  he  had  not  taken  account  of  tlie 
verdict  of  the  Zeitgeist  in  favour  of  imperialism  as  against  nation- 
alism, or  still  more  as  against  civicism.  He  still  thought  of  imperium 
civile;  he  had  not  reckoned  with  the  inherent  inadequacy  of  sena- 
torian  government  to  maintain  itself  under  the  new  '  historic  category'; 
he  could  not  see  that  it  would  be  unable  to  control  its  pashas,  and 
that  it  could  not  exist  except  as  '  the  old  consUtution,'  which  under 
Sulla  it  was  not. 

Or  if  he  saw  and  recognised  that  the  evils  objected  were  ineradic- 
able, and  that  restored  by  force  it  must  be  retained  by  force,  he  must 
have  shrugged  his  shoulders  with  Epicurean  calmness  and  murmured 
the  Greek  equivalent  for  Apres  moi  le  deluge. 

c  2 


I 


36 

To  sum  up,  then,  the  economic  side  of  Roman  decadence,  we 
see  the  origin  of  the  evil  in  the  extinction  of  the  middle  classes — a 
fact  which  brought  with  it  its  own  punishment  in  the  decline  of  the 
landwehr  and  the  necessiiy  for  those  armies  which  became  the 
merely  personal  followings  of  great  leaders,  and  which  slew  no  less 
than  six  leaders  during  the  '  civil  war,'  notably  Flaccus,  Cinna,  and 
Carbo ;  which  enacted  in  fact  the  part  of  the  praetorians  under  the 
emperors. 

From  the  decay  of  the  middle  classes  dates  the  rise  of  the  prole- 
tariat. It  became  impossible  for  the  man  of  small  means  to  maintain 
himself  in  the  competition  of  capitahsts,  often  assisted  by  direct 
legislation  in  favour  of  the  strong  holder.  The  proletariat  grew, 
idled,  and  talked;  slaves  did  its  work,  and  the  plantation  system 
appeared.  Emancipations  changed  the  character  of  the  proletariat 
for  the  worse ;  it  became  the  grand  cause  of  anarchy ;  it  was  organ- 
ised into  clubs  and  claques ;  it  took  bribes,  and  bullied  and  blustered 
for  pay.  It  showed  the  incompetence  of  the  old  government,  and 
became  gradually  an  Adullamite  party  which  was  a  good  recruiting 
ground  for  the  army  of  an  imperator — the  criminal,  the  spendthrift, 
the  profligate  and  the  like  constituted  a  nucleus  of  i)olit  cal  discontent. 
Ti.  Gracchus  faced  the  evils,  and  attempted  to  combat  the  Hydra  with 
the  wooden  sword  of  '  the  vice  in  the  old  comedy.'  For  a  time,  if 
statistics  are  reliable,  he  stopped  depopulation,  but  he  invented  fatal 
con>titutiunal  precedents  and  died  a  martyr  in  the  cause  of  the  im- 
possible. And  he  left  a  socialistic  negative  propaganda  to  those  who 
might  come  after. 

C.  Gracchus,  of  malice  aforethought,  plunged  the  sovereign  people 
into  the  depths  of  dehumanised  pauperism.  He  taught  them  to  lay 
their  hands  on  provmcial  revenues ;  and  to  play  off  merchant  prince 
and  hereditary  noble  one  against  the  other.  He  abolished  corporal 
punishment  anew,  when  it  was  most  needed.  He  deposed  the  senate, 
roused  Italy  to  fierce  agitation,  and  accomplished  nothing  but  the 
prelude  to  an  amorphism  which  to  the  nihilist  implies  a  perfect 
TraXiy^fffcTta.  He  gave  a  perfect  exposidon  of  the  revolution,  and  died 
to  give  it  what  it  needed,  a  conscious  martyr. 

Marius  made  a  new  army  out  of  the  material  to  hand ;  Gladiators, 
slaves,  Italians  became  soldiers  and  citizens  during  the  bustling  period 
that  followed.  The  nation  longed  for  peace,  the  provinces  for  relief, 
the  less  well-disposed  longed  for  a  struggle  and  a  scramble.  The 
struggle  came,  and  after  it  the  peace;  a  Cato  is  the  caricature  of 
senatorianism,  a  Cras^us  of  mercantilism,  a  Spartacus  of  the  plan- 
tation system,  a  Verres  of  provincial  administraUon,  a  Clodius  of  the 
mob-rule,  a  Pompeius  of  the  new  militarism  ;  and  the  onesided  views 
represented  by  all  these  gave  way  before  Caesar's  political  and  eco- 
nomic genius,  which  yet  failed  to  grasp  all  or  nearly  all  the  detail 
of  the  decline  of  which  he  was  the  outcome.  Victrix  causa  deis  and 
not  too  soon. 

Such  is  the  account  of  Roman  decline  which  we  have  to  offer. 
But  what,  it  may  be  asked,  supposing  this  to  be  the  whole  account 


^ 


tk 


"^ 


37 

of  the  decay, — what  shall  we  say  of  the  judgment  of  Romans  them- 
selves \  that  irreligion,  luxury,  cosmopolitanism,  bribery,  falsity,  im- 
morality, were  the  true  causes  of  Rome's  downfall  ? 

In  our  view  they  are  rather  effects  and  symptoms  than  truly  efficient 
causes.  And  they  are  symptoms  of  degeneracy  from  the  good  old 
times,  which  are  noted  by  historians  haphazard,  and  each  with  an 
exaggerated  prominence,  and  an  emphasis  which  the  original  writers 
would  probably  disown.  *  The  man  died  of  gout '  is  a  fair  expression 
of  a  certain  fact,  but  on  analysis  it  amounts  only  to  this :  he  died  of 
that  for  which  gout  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign,  and  of  which  gout 
is  even  an  outlet  and  a  remedy.  We  will,  however,  consider  them 
briefly,  in  turn. 

Doubtless  it  was  an  evil  day  for  Rome  when  the  Senatiis  consultum 
de  Bacchanalibus  was  needed ;  no  doubt  the  introduction  of  eastern 
orgiastic  worships  into  the  capital  was  in  a  sense  the  ruin  of  one  more 
pillar  of  conservatism.  It  is  equally  true,  too,  that  the  religious  char- 
latanism, wiiich  so  infected  society  as  to  cause  a  Marius  to  advise  with 
his  sorceress,  a  Sertorius  to  masquerade  with  his  white  doe,  was  a 
sad  sign  of  changed  times.  The  scandals  of  1 14  b.  c.  and  of  61  were 
similar  symptoms  of  grave  degeneracy,  but  to  attach  a  serious  im- 
portance to  them  as  efficients  is,  we  think,  to  label  antecedents  as 
causes  much  too  hastily. 

The  adoption  of  Greek  philosophy  by  the  Scipionic  circle,  the 
philosophical  scepticism  of  Lucretius,  the  pantheism  w^hich  we  find 
under  the  empire  in  Lucan  "^  are  politically  not  on  a  level  with  the 
Aufkldrung  expounded  by  Voltaire  and  Rousseau ;  and  in  the  same 
w-ay  Isis  and  Cybebe  might  perhaps  depose  Jupiter,  but  their  votaries 
did  not  carry  their  propaganda  into  a  war  on  Terminus.  Such  things 
are  to  be  regarded  as  proofs  of  the  way  in  which  Rome  had  become 
a  coUuvies  of  the  nations,  and  nothing  more. 

There  was  a  really  effective  irreligion,  but  it  was  of  an  early  intro- 
duction. It  was  that  which  prostituted  priestly  offices  and  functions 
to  political  purposes,  and  which  brought  in  the  Aelia  et  Fufia  for  its 
palladium ;  that  desecration  of  the  auspices  and  other  spiritual  sur- 
vivals of  the  old  Etruscan  state-religion  to  purposes  for  which,  after 
the  days  of  the  first  sacred  wars,  the  Greeks  ^  had  seldom  used  even 
oracles.  It  was,  however,  in  the  days  of  the  most  successful  rule  that 
Rome  ever  enjoyed, — that  of  the  Carthaginian  war-time — that  this 
irreligious  system  of  auspices  and  spectiones  is  found  in  its  full 
vitality. 

And  luxury,  too,  is  at  least  as  much  an  effect  as  a  cause.  Luxury 
may  have  helped  to  destroy  the  empire,  but  it  in  no  sense  ruined  the 
republic — and  this  despite  Montesquieu's  judgment*  that  in  a  common- 
wealth luxury  is  fatal  because  against  equality — in  a  monarchy  helpful 
within  limits  as  distinguishing  classes. 

*  V.  Lucan  Phars.  i.  158-182  ;   Sail.  Cat.  10-13,  etc. 
^  E.g.  ix.  580. 

'  For  an  instance  to  the  contrary,  see  Thuc.  v.  54. 

*  Espr.  des  Lois,  vii.  4. 

C3 


38 

Doubtless  the  aviaries  and  fishponds,  the  entertainments  and 
spectacles,  the  villas  and  familiae  which  prompted  that  catena  of 
sumptuary  legislation  which  begins  with  the  lex  Orchia  and  does  not 
close  with  the  lex  sumptuaria  Augusti^  show  at  the  least  the  existence 
of  a  grave  evil.  Legislators  strove  to  preach  it  down  and  drive  it 
under  cover,  and  yet  we  have  the  debts  of  Curio,  of  Antonius,  of 
C.  Caesar  himself.  A  Catiline,  a  Milo  and  a  Dolabella  essayed  to  save 
themselves  and  the  Jeunesse  dore'e  by  a  resort  to  novae  tabulae.  Never- 
theless it  is  to  be  doubted  whether,  in  a  pre-industrial  age,  the 
excesses  were  beyond  legitimate  expectation,  and  whether  they  were 
really  harmful  in  any  marked  degree. 

We  are  not  of  course  concerned  to  offer  an  apology  for  luxury  in 
general,  even  as  constituting  a  rational  reserve  fund  for  times  of 
exceptional  distress;  but  surely  there  was  much  excuse  for  Rome. 
Was  not  the  luxury  which  prevented  the  capitalistic  racking  of  the 
provinces  and  the  afforestation  of  Italy  from  an  indefinite  extension 
even  a  blessing  ?  The  Romans  had  not  studied  industrial  policy,  but 
they  at  least  understood  usury,  and  the  comes  or  attache'  of  a  provincial 
governor  was  perhaps  less  of  a  curse  than  the  respectable  Atticus  or 
the  moral  Brutus.  A  Roman  bill  of  fare  as  described  by  Macrobius  ''* 
or  in  '  Peregrine  Pickle  '  involved  at  all  events  a  demand  for  labour  in 
the  better  sense,  and  *  enriched  in  passing  many  an  industrious  hand, 
and  supported  more  poor  than  philanthropy  with  its  expenditure  of 
aims^'  and  many  more  than  the  capitalistic  speculation  of  the  second 
century  b.  c. 

With  cosmopolitanism  we  need  hardly  deal ;  for  save  through  the 
fatal  capitalistic  slavery  of  declining  Rome,  cosmopolitanism  would 
never  have  found  a  real  inlet ;  and  with  its  cause  we  have  already 
become  familiar.  As  an  element  in  demoralisation  it  is  a  secondary, 
not  a  primary  cause.     But  what  of  bribery  and  corruption } 

Here,  too,  we  see  symptoms  not  causes  of  decay — '  invariable  con- 
comitants '  which  are  yet  not  important  factors  in  the  result,  of  which 
they  are,  indeed,  rather  the  creations.  In  so  far  as  they  are  part  and 
parcel  of  the  political  system,  they  come  under  the  economic  develop- 
ment of  the  proletariat,  and  so  far  only  are  they  even  of  importance  in 
Roman  history.  A  Verres  is  a  plague-spot  in  a  nation,  but  a  Verres 
and  men  like  Verres  are  genuine  products  of  Roman  political  and 
economic  civilisation.  The  emancipated  magistrate  who  must  face  an 
(xjSvvt)  before  publicani  and  negotiator es,  if  he  have  sufficient  wicked- 
ness in  him  naturally  becomes  a  Verres.  Verritium  jus  is,  in  the 
decHne,  a  specialised  version  o^ jus  Romanum. 

So,  too,  the  long  list  of  enactments  de  repetundis^  and  the  very  exist- 
ence of  the  divinaiio  as  a  regular  feature  of  judicial  procedure,  may  be 
and  are  ill-omened,  but  they  are  palliatives  of  an  evil  ingrain,  of  which 
we  have  treated.  For  the  rest,  bribery  did  little  or  no  harm.  The 
populus  was  proletarian,  and  without  hope  of  becoming  by  reform 
or  by  revolution  an  efficient  in  government,   and  the  bribes  of  a 


f 


*  Tac.  iii.  54 ;  A.  Gell.  ii.  24. 

'  Mommsen,  v.  ii,  vol.  IV.  p.  507. 


111.  13. 


.X 


39 

Crassus  no  more  pauperised  them  than  the  frumentaria  lex  of  a 
Gracchus.     Among  a  pauper-mob  they  might  even  do  good,  for  they 
might  divert  capital  from  the  enslavement,  by  compound  indebtedness 
of  industrial  subject  communities  ^ 

The  really  harmful  bribery,  then,  was  not  that  of  the  elections  • 
while  that  of  the  law-courts  was,  until  Rome  was  actually  totterin<T 
to  its  fall,  only  that  of  the  ^y^ioxWon-quaestio,  and  that  was  a  product,  ol" 
the  system.     Nor  was  it  otherwise  with  general  political  corruption 
The  buying  of  elections,  which  called  forth  the  law  of  159,  was,  in  the 
complex  of  anomalies  which  went  to  form  the  Roman  state,  perhaps 
even  a  postponement  of  the  decline,  for  it  might  conduce  to  the 
continuance  of  senatorian  ascendancy.     And  when  we  reach  the  dis- 
graceful private  bribery  of  54  b.c.^,  fully  analysed  by  Montesquieu  ^ 
repubhcan  Rome  had  really  ceased  to  be.     *  Bribery  and  corruption,' 
then,  and  any  '  ambition '  which  went  beyond  liberalitas  and  benignitas 
according  to  the  delicate  phrasing  of  the  laws,  might  and  did  affect  the 
discount  rate  *,  but  for  anything  else  they  were  powerless. 

Among  the  catchwords  which  we  have  taken  haphazard  the  next 
perhaps  is  of  most  importance.  Falsity,  by  which  we  understand  the 
plus  quam  Punicajides  of  Rome,  begins  early  with  the  Caudine  disaster  • 
but  then  it  has  some  extenuating  circumstances.  Later,  bad  faith 
had  a  precedent  which  might  have  taught  the  nations  not  to  treat  with 
a  magistrate,  but  only  with  Rome.  But  it  is  nevertheless  impossible 
to  deny  that  the  honour  of  Rome  '  was  permanently  dragged  in  the 
mire  by  a  perfidy  and  faithlessness  without  parallel,  by  the  most  wanton 
trifling  with  capitulations  and  treaties  ^'  the  most  flagrant  instances  of 
which  are  the  treaty  of  a  Pompeius  with  the  Numantines  in  139  and 
the  state-repudiation  of  Mancinus  in  137,  in  which  latter  case  not'only 
the  consul— a  man  not  received  in  the  leading  aristocratic  coteries, 
and  therefore  sacrificed  as  an  outsider— but  every  officer  who  had 
sworn  to  the  treaty  should  have  been  given  up. 

There  is  no  excuse,  moreover,  to  be  offered,  save  that  '  international 
law  ceases  just  where  universal  monarchy  begins,'  i.e.  that  a  Napoleonic 
eagerness  for  victory  blinds  states  to  right,  and  makes  them  grasp  at 
every  subterfuge  on  the  ground  that  all  is  fair  in  love  or  war.  As, 
however,  international  conventions  were  scarcely  recognised,  and 
Phoenician  and  Greek  are  tainted  with  the  same  fault,  and  as  even  in 
modern  times— notable  in  our  own  self-assertion  against  Denmark 
which  issued  in  Nelson's  victory  at  Copenhagen— the  rights  of  bel* 
ligerents  have  often  been  held  extremely  doubtful,  we  may  perhaps 
dismiss  'bad-faith'  as  a  cause  of  Roman  decline,  or,  at  least,  of 
Roman  decline  specially ;  though,  no  doubt,  it  avenged  itself,-  possibly 
in  the  murder  of  Cn.  Pompeius. 

Our  last  formula  still  remains  to  be  considered— the  somewhat 
wide  term  '  immorality.'     Was  immorality,  then,  in  any  large  sense 

•  Cf.  Sail.  Cat.  40 ;  Tac.  Ann.  iii.  40 ;  Dio.  Ixii.  2. 

'  Cic.  ad  Att.  iv.  18.  =»  Grand,  et  Dec.  des  Remains,  can.  10. 

*  Cic.  ad  Att.  iv.  15. 

^  Mommsen  iv.  cap.  i.  vol.  III.  p.  61. 


40 

a  vera  causa  of  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Republic  ?  We  venture  to  think 
not,  though  in  its  reflex  action  on  the  causes  and  occasions  of  the 
decline  it  is  of  a  graver  importance  than  most  of  the  elements  with 
which  it  has  been  classed.  It  deserves,  therefore,  a  somewhat  more 
detailed  attention. 

The  idea  of  immorality  that  is  in  the  minds  of  those  who  hold 
that  the  fall  of  a  nation  is  usually  a  national  judgment  for  a  national 
sin,  is  one  which  comprises  in  a  single  view  that  festering  mass  of 
evil  which  appears,  for  example,  in  Cicero's  speech  on  behalf  of 
Cluentius.  We  take  it  to  mean  unfaith  and  unchastity  in  all  their 
varied  consequences ;  and  in  respect  of  these  the  brief  against  Rome 
is  a  grave  one. 

For  the  old  Roman  domestic  ideals  had,  long  before  the  days  of 
Caesar,  died  completely  out.  Before  the  revolution  was  well  begun,  a 
censor  could  expound  the  cynical  theory  that  si  sine  uxore  possemiis^ 
quirites,  esse^  omnes  ea  molestia  careremus"^,  and  the  doctrine  could 
gain  the  adhesion  of  Cato  of  Utica'^.  Celibacy  had  to  be  dis- 
countenanced by  actual  disabilities  and  by  premiums  on  marriage, 
such  as  were  the  old  uxorium  or  bachelor-tax,  the  jus  liberorum  con- 
ceded in  the  programme  of  Ti.  Gracchus,  the  compulsory  marriage 
urged  by  Metellus^  and  the  7roXv7rat8/ay  a&ka  of  Gains  Julius'  first 
consulship.  Marriages  de  convenance  and  divorces  were  common,  as 
the  cases  of  Pompeius,  of  Cicero,  and  of  Caesar  himself  amply  prove. 
Women  were  emancipated,  and  their  liberty  was  license ;  Praecia, 
the  mistress  of  Cethegus,  could  appoint  to  provincial  commands,  as 
in  the  case  of  Lucullus  ^ ;  Clodia  had  an  equal  or  a  worse  influence ; 
Fulvia  and  Sempronia^  prove  in  the  downfall  how  far  moral  cor- 
ruption had  spread.  Isis  worship,  and  the  like,  gained  increasing 
hold  of  Rome.  The  worst  immoralities  flourished,  and  openly.  And 
in  the  face  of  a  threatening  depopulation,  all  the  sins  of  a  sophisticated 
metropolis  ran  their  course. 

But  we  think  it  would  yet  be  a  mistake  to  erect  these  vices  of  the 
declining  Roman  people  into  the  principal  scourge  which  hastened 
the  revolution.  It  is  not  a  case  of  the  Theban  clubs  in  the  time  of 
Polybius,  and  it  is  an  evil  which  has  still  to  run  its  course  under  Nero 
and  Domitian.  From  the  dates  too  of  our  examples  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  most  striking  cases  are  of  a  date  later  than  the  consummation 
of  the  decline,  and  the  beginnings  of  revolution.  We  shall  perhaps, 
then,  not  be  wrong  in  attributing  the  growth  of  Roman  demoralisation 
to  that  capitalistic  system  which  imported  the  corrupter  elements  of 
more  infected  societies  as  slaves,  and  which  made  Rome  a  Greek  city, 
full  of  pliant  parasites  and  sycophants  who  won  their  freedom  by  their 
supple  complaisances  and  introduced  libertinism.  And  if  so,  immo- 
rality, like  the  rest,  becomes  a  secondary  element  in  the  decadence. 

*  Metellus  Numidicus  ap.  A.  Gell.  i.  6.  2.  '  Lucan  ii.  388  sqq. 

'  Cf.  Cic.  de  Off.  ii.  21  Non  esse  in  republica  duo  millia  hominum  qui  rem 
haberent,  etc.  Capitalism  and  the  proletariat  necessitated  an  artificial  policy  to 
create  a  middle  class. 

♦  Dio.  xliii.  25.  »  Sail.  Cat.  25. 


i 


>f 


X^ 


41 

Why,  then,  mention  elements  in  Roman  demoralisation  which  are  not 
to  be  classed  as  causes  or  reasons  for  the  decline .?  There  are  many 
grounds  for  so  doing;  firstly,  they  are  noteworthy  as  showing  the 
effects  of  the  Roman  system,  and,  negatively,  its  sins  of  omission, 
for  'in  all  moral  machmery  the  moral  results  are  the  test\'  And 
again,  they  are  remarkable  as  showing  ttiat  the  state  was  sapped 
down  to  its  very  foundation,  since  the  principium  of  Rome  was  sternly 
moral.  They  prove,  too,  the  hopelessness  of  regeneration,  when  all 
alike  shared  in  the  rottenness  ;  they  demonstrate  the  need  for  a  tabula 
rasa  when  all  things  political,  economic,  social  and  moral  are  hope- 
lessly blurred.  Or  again,  they  are  of  value,  since  though  effects, 
they  must  react,  if  a  state  be  not  merely  mechanical  but  organic.  And 
if  none  of  these  reasons  are  adequate,  yet  '  distinguendo  copulentur' 
since  they  round  off  Roman  life,  by  touching— lightly  and  superficially 
perhaps,  but  still  touching— on  the  sins  and  failures  of  every  class. 
For  these  reasons,  then,  a  consideration  of  these  so-styled  factors  in 
the  decline  is  not  unjustified. 

Leaving  side-issues,  however,  the  reason  for  Roman  decline  seems 
to  lie  in  this  :  the  Roman  constitution  was  compounded,  but  not 
blended ;  mixed,  but  not  harmonised.  It  was  a  svstem  of  partial 
expressions  of  the  political  will,  of  which  each  was  artificially  and  mor- 
bidly developed  to  limit  the  others,  but  none  was  in  iiself  efficient  or 
self-determinant. 

The  result  was  that  reform  was  from  the  first  incongruous  and  all 
but  inconceivable,  for  it  meant  reconstitution ;  and  all  measures  for 
the  prevention  of  decline  were  accordingly  partisan,  onesided,  and 
personal.  Economic  legislation  appeared  indeed,  at  an  early  date,  in 
the  department  of  finance,  and  robbed  one  element  in  the  state  of 
its  vitality  without  destroying  it ;  the  populus  was  paralysed  by  the 
iributum,  only  galvanised  by  the  evolution  of  the  tributa  comiiia  and 
the  tribunate,  and  yet  it  dragged  on  an  existence,  objecdess  and 
devoid  of  any  true  aim.  The  first  proletariat  which  represented 
it  was  a  disorganised  vX^ ;  and  later  ensued  a  poisoning  of  the  vk^ 
itself  The  protoplasm  of  the  state  was,  from  an  early  date,  utterly 
corrupted. 

And  yet  the  senate,  which  for  the  time  controlled  the  magistrate, 
could  not  reach  a  real  organisation  and  self-determination.  While  it 
prevented  the  upward  evolution  of  populus  and  plebs,  and  made  the 
nucleation  of  the  organic  life  of  the  community  in  the  magistracy  an 
impossibility,  it  could  not  secure  any  permanent  independent  life  for 
itself  It  did  not  assimilate,  and  therefore  necessarily  degenerated, 
except  when  its  environment  called  for  a  real  self-assertion  when  ^  it 
gained  renewed  vitality.  It  was  not  a  '  tactical '  principle  in  govern- 
ment, and  it  failed  to  form  a  consistent  TtSKvrda.  The  magistrates,  too, 
who  might  have  formed  the  state,  were  long  powerless,  because  of  the 

*  Burke. 

'  On  Doubleday's  principle  of  population,  which  is  in  part  a  truism,  if  in  part 
untrue. 


I 


42 

disintegration,  the  non-unitary  character  of  the  magistracy  as  a  centre 
of  organisation.  They  could  not  disencumber  themselves  of  the  dead 
mass  of  popular  tendencies,  which  they  could  nevertheless  by  no 
means  assimilate ;  nor  could  they  overcome  the  organised  imperium 
in  imperio — the  senate  which  was  their  council. 

The  magistrates  were  undoubtedly  the  only  formative  element  in 
the  state,  for  only  with  the  possibility  of  an  effective  democracy, 
primary  or  representative,  could  the  populus,  and  of  course  the  plebs, 
become  more  than  vXj};  and  while  lying  between  these  two  ideals — one 
its  Eden,  the  other  iis  Paradise — the  populus  was  extinguished.  And 
the  senate  was  dumb  and  paralysed,  except  when  it  used  other  mouth- 
pieces and  hands ;  it  was  in  no  sense  formative. 

And  so  when  iht populus  became  proletarian,  and  its  hopeful  elements 
died  out  with  the  growth  of  agrarian  distress  and  usury  and  taxation  and 
militarism,  and  when  no  '  Colbertism*'  could  prevent  that  decay  of  the 
yeomanry  which  was  the  bane  of  antiquity,  the  senate  attempting  an 
o/ganic  creation  failed ;  for  it  needed  something  more  than  its  bastard 
animation  to  enable  it  to  convert  matter  into  life.  And  there  was  left 
only  the  magistrate.  But  there  was  schism  in  the  magistracy,  and  a 
double  or  multiple  organisation  seemed  probable.  The  partition  of 
the  true  nucleus  of  imperial  life  was  favoured  by  the  senate,  and  as 
the  senatorian  activity  decayed,  a  dismemberment  of  empire  might 
have  appeared  feasible  in  which  senatus  or  populus  should  acquire  a 
true  vitality  as  a  centre  of  national  organisation.  Such  a  development 
however  was  checked  by  two  influences, — the  condition  of  the  Medi- 
terranean peoples  external  to  Rome,  and  the  fatal  Roman  conserva- 
tism. 

The  first  of  these,  which  resulted  in  the  constant  augmentation  of 
the  material  elements  of  empire,  by  the  accession  of  the  devitalised 
components  of  the  aticiefis  regimes  of  Carthage  and  of  Greece,  might 
have  seemed  likely,  taken  with  the  constitutional  primacy  of  the  populus 
in  Rome,  to  issue  in  the  premature  evolution  of  nationalities.  But 
the  reverse  was  in  fact  the  case,  for  the  Greek  and  Siceliot  and  African 
power  of  self-determination  had  worn  itself  out,  and  the  demoralisation 
of  the  sovereign  and  subject-peoples  could  alike  issue  only  in  anarchy. 
A  Viriathus  must  fall  by  assassination  ;  a  Sertorius  could  not  maintain 
a  Rome  of  the  west.  The  Gallic  peoples  had  no  efficient  organisa- 
tion ;  the  northern  nations  had  scarcely  arisen.  No  formation  was 
possible.  The  leges  Salpensa  et  Maluginensis  were  the  first  origins  of 
a  true  nationalism,  and  they  were  not  yet.  Anarchy  and  its  natural 
event  in  autocratic  rule  were  the  only  possible  issues. 

And  when  a  magistrate  escaped  the  trammels  of  senatorian  routine, 
he  might  conquer  in  east  or  west,  but  sooner  or  later  he  made  his  aim 
and  object  Rome.  St.  Peter's  in  mediaeval  Rome  was  not  more  the 
focus  of  all  roads  and  all  pilgrimages  than  was  the  Capitol  under  the 
Commonwealth.  Conservatism  might  yield  to  the  superficial  varnish 
of  Greek  culture  and  foster  the  serpent  of  Punic  imperial  policy, 
because  Rome  had  no  real  culture  and  no  real  political  genius,  but 
it  never  gave  way  to  any  sentiment  anti-Roman.     It  was  perhaps 


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> 


A 


43 

Chauvinism  and  Jingoism,  and  not  patriotism,  but  it  looked  to  the 
civic  Rome  as  oncpdXos  of  its  world. 

Anarchy,  then,  and  a  saturnaHa  of  the  dangerous  classes  were  the 
natural  issue  of  the  breakdown  of  the  senatorian  machinery  and  of 
the  economic  system.  The  struggle  of  the  orders  ensued  and  a  rush 
for  the  spoils,  and  the  fittest  survived,  i.  e.  the  people  as  strongest. 
But  the  people  too  were  an  element  in  the  empire  unfitted  for 
government,  and  they  succumbed  to  the  arms  of  the  organisers  of  the 
principate.  The  decline  worked  itself  out,  and  ended  in  what 
divus  Augustus  chose  to  call  the  restoration  of  the  commonwealth  in 
B.C.  27,  but  which  the  historians  term  the  Roman  empire. 

'  The  old  age  of  a  polity  is  rarely  venerable,'  and  the  decline  of  the 
Roman  Republic  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  It  is  moreover  a  decline 
which  begins  with  the  Republic  itself,  and  de^•elopes  throughout  its 
history.  It  is  as  a  study  of  disease  and  decay  therefore  that  Roman 
history,  and  especially  Rome's  internal  history,  is  scientifically  valuable. 

And  scientific  value  in  general  implies  artistic  worthlessness.  The 
fall  of  the  empire  lends  itself  to  expression  in  a  work  of  art,  for  it  is 
the  gathering  of  the  nations  round  the  dying  lion.  The  fall  of  the 
empire  can  be  presented  in  the  likeness  of  a  spectacle  in  the 
Coliseum.  But  the  Republic's  decline  is  not  picturesque,  for  it  is  a 
lingering  death  under  internal  disease ;  no  eagles  gather  round  it,  for 
its  physical  strength  is  not  burned  out.  It  is  the  grim  reality  of  some 
Hogarth's  picture  representing  in  detail  the  horrors  of  a  prolonged 
struggle,  in  isolation,  against  the  grip  of  inward  pain  and  tribulation. 
It  is  the  death-agony,  not  in  battle,  but  in  the  chamber,  and  it  is 
therefore  thoroughly  revolting. 

But  as  a  study,  not  from  the  studio  but  from  the  mortuary,  it  is 
deeply  and  permanently  interesting.  It  is  the  greatest  example  in 
history  of  a  constitution  balanced,  not  harmonised — a  constitution 
doomed  to  perish  because  its  unstable  equilibrium  will  not  allow  of 
its  assimilating  the  necessary  nutriment  of  life.  And  it  is  the  grand 
example  of  a  state  versed  in  the  expedients  of  finance  and  commerce, 
but  dying  because  it  did  not  and  could  not  know  that  economics  to 
be  real  and  wholesome  must  before  all  things  consider  men  and  their 
needs.  And  finally,  it  is  remarkable  as  the  first  empire  or  universal 
dominion  known  to  European  history ;  and  the  result  is  discouraging. 
Rome  verily  in  the  freshness  and  purity  of  her  early  life  had  great 
possibilities ;  and  the  decline  of  her  polity  is  the  greatest  political 
and  moral  failure  that  the  world  has  yet  seen.     Mole  ruit  sua. 


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